Releasing a new Cloud Foundry buildpack version

Page last updated:

You can update and release a new version of a Cloud Foundry (CF) buildpack through the CF Buildpacks Team Concourse pipeline. Concourse is a continuous integration (CI) tool for software development teams. This process is used by the CF Buildpacks Team and other CF buildpack development teams. You can use this process as a model for using Concourse to build and release new versions of your own buildpacks.

The Concourse pipelines for Cloud Foundry buildpacks are located in the buildpacks-ci GitHub repository.

Releasing a new buildpack version

To release a new buildpack version, do the following:

1. Download the buildpacks-ci repository:

   $ git clone https://github.com/cloudfoundry/buildpacks-ci.git
   

2. From the buildpack directory, check out the develop branch of the buildpack:

   $ cd /system/path/to/buildpack
   $ git checkout develop
   

3. Make sure you have the most current version of the repository:

   $ git pull -r
   

4. Run bump to update the version in the buildpack repository:

   $ /system/path/to/buildpacks-ci/scripts/bump
   

5. Modify the CHANGELOG file manually to condense recent commits into relevant changes. For more information, see Modify Changelogs.

6. Add and commit your changes:

   $ git add VERSION CHANGELOG
   $ git commit -m "Bump version to $(cat VERSION) [{insert story #}]"
   

7. Push your changes to the develop branch:

   $ git push origin develop
   

Concourse buildpack workflow

If buildpacks-ci is not deployed to Concourse, manually add a Git tag to the buildpack, and mark the tag as a release on GitHub.

If buildpacks-ci is deployed to Concourse, the buildpack update passes through the following life cycle:

1. Concourse starts the buildpack-to-master job in the pipeline for the updated buildpack. This job merges into the master or main branch of the buildpack.

2. The detect-new-buildpack-and-upload-artifacts job starts in the pipeline for the updated buildpack. This job creates a cached and uncached buildpack, and uploads them to an AWS S3 bucket.

3. The specs-lts-master and specs-edge-master jobs start and run the buildpack test suite, and the buildpack-specific tests of the Buildpack Runtime Acceptance Tests (BRATS).

4. If you use Pivotal Tracker, paste the links for the specs-edge-master and specs-lts-master builds in the related buildpack release story, and deliver the story.

5. Your project manager can manually start the buildpack-to-github job on Concourse as part of the acceptance process. This releases the buildpack to GitHub.

6. After the buildpack has been released to GitHub, the cf-release pipeline is started using the manual initiation of the recreate-bosh-lite job in that pipeline. If the new buildpack has been released to GitHub, the CF that is deployed for testing in the cf-release pipeline is tested against that new buildpack.

7. After the cats job has successfully completed, your project manager can include the new buildpacks in the cf-release repository and create the new buildpack BOSH release by manually starting the ship-it job.

If errors occur during this workflow, you might need to remove unwanted tags. For more information, see Handle Unwanted Tags.

Modifying changelogs

The Ruby buildpack changelog shows an example layout, and content of a changelog. In general, changelogs follow these conventions:

• Reference public tracker stories whenever possible.
• Exclude unnecessary files.
• Combine and condense commit statements into individual stories containing valuable changes.

Handling unwanted tags

If you encounter problems with the commit that contains the new version, change the target of the release tag by performing the following:

1. Verify that the repository is in a valid state and is building successfully.
2. Remove the tag from your local repository and from GitHub.
3. Start a build. The pipeline build script tags the build again if it is successful.