Release a new minor version (0.X.0)

[Kodiologist]

Paul asked for this on July 7th here. Our last release was in 2015, so it's been a while.

[tuturto]

I'll start working on releasing 0.12.0

[tuturto]

• check news and update it if needed
• ... (all the missing steps here)
• Update version.py with new version number (if Generate hy.version using git describe #1135 isn't merged yet)
• build and test install packages
• Write down instructions how to do release for the next time
• tag release in github
• let @paultag know that everything is ready for uploading to PyPi (remember setup.py!)
• Update docker image (or let maintainers to know new release is ready)
• Update Debian package (or let maintainers to know new release is ready)

[Kodiologist]

Awesome, thanks for doing this. It would also make sense to close outstanding pull requests (that aren't too complicated) before the release.

If #1135 is merged, you won't need to edit version.py manually.

[tuturto]

It'll take some time to go through a year of commits and pull relevant things into NEWS file. But that's probably the most time consuming part. I'll be happy to include all the PRs that are closed into release and we really should aim to release a bit more often anyway.

[gilch]

We're still in the process of making breaking changes. We were reluctant to make a release, since that would break everyone's code twice instead of once. But perhaps incremental changes are easier to deal with than big changes? Just saying.

[tuturto]

I don't like breaking code more often than absolutely necessary either, but 0.11.0 is over a year old now. I agree with inceremental changes. Easier to fix 2 months worth of changes than 12 months worth of changes.

[tuturto]

https://pypi.python.org/pypi/hy/0.12.0

[gilch]

Which versions of Python do we support? I thought we stopped supporting 2.6 #843 and added tests for 3.6 #1133? That's not what the pypi page shows.

[Kodiologist]

We certainly haven't dropped support for 2.6 yet, and we intend to support 3.6 given that we're testing it and it's the newest stable Python 3.

Edit: No, wait, by 2.6, I was thinking of 2.7. I'm not sure about 2.6.

[refi64]

We certainly haven't dropped support for 2.6 yet

Uhhh...

I'm guessing @paultag just forgot to update the classifiers...

[gilch]

Do we also need any non-CPython classifiers?

[gilch]

It looks like Travis is also running PyPy tests. It's still showing 3.6-dev, but Python 3.6 has been released now. Can we update that yet? We also might want to consider supporting other Python implementations officially #934.

[Kodiologist]

Are we ready to make announcements? It would make sense to make a post to /r/lisp, for example.

[tuturto]

So far it's been announced in:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/hylang/status/821786120086290432
• Google Groups: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/hylang-discuss/lL0iQmGMP3s

/r/lisp would be good and I'm sure there are still others. @Kodiologist would you do /r/lisp?

[Kodiologist]

Sure thing: https://www.reddit.com/r/lisp/comments/5ouno4

(Huh, I didn't know that Twitter account existed.)

[gilch]

Can we update the try-hy app too?

[tuturto]

We should, but I don't know where or how try-hy is updated. Docker image and debian packages need some love too.

[Kodiologist]

I guess nobody knows how to do the Docker image or the Debian package, huh? Maybe we should just pass the buck on those, since we already have two official release channels, GitHub and PyPI.

[tianon]

Arg, I'm on both Docker and Debian -- Debian is at 0.12.1 now (https://packages.debian.org/sid/hy), and I need to look into my Docker automation to figure out why it didn't pick up 0.12.1. I'll get that fixed ASAP. 👍

[tianon]

Ok, Docker update is in queue: docker-library/official-images#2781

[tuturto]

Great, thank you @tianon

[Kodiologist]

@tuturto, if you do the last checkbox (writing release instructions), I'll handle a new release, say 0.13.0, around June.

[tuturto]

Quick and dirty version: https://github.com/hylang/hy/wiki/Release-instructions
Should cover all the important bits. Not sure if I forgot any forgotten bits, but they can be added later.