# How To Validate a New Release

## Introduction

This document contains information about testing the release candidates that
will ultimately be the next LLVM release. For more information on how to
manage the actual release, please refer to {doc}`HowToReleaseLLVM`.

### Overview of the Release Process

Once the release process starts, the Release Manager will ask for volunteers,
and it'll be the role of each volunteer to:

- Test and benchmark the previous release
- Test and benchmark each release candidate, comparing to the previous release
  and candidates
- Identify, reduce and report every regression found during tests and benchmarks
- Make sure the critical bugs get fixed and merged to the next release candidate

Not all bugs or regressions are show-stoppers and it's a bit of a grey area what
should be fixed before the next candidate and what can wait until the next
release.

It'll depend on:

- The severity of the bug, how many people it affects and if it's a regression
  or a known bug. Known bugs are "unsupported features" and some bugs can be
  disabled if they have been implemented recently.
- The stage in the release. Less critical bugs should be considered to be
  fixed between RC1 and RC2, but not so much at the end of it.
- If it's a correctness or a performance regression. Performance regression
  tends to be taken more lightly than correctness.

(scripts)=

## Scripts

The scripts are in the `utils/release` directory.

### test-release.sh

This script will check-out, configure and compile LLVM+Clang (+ most add-ons,
like `compiler-rt`, `libcxx`, `libomp` and `clang-extra-tools`) in
three stages, and will test the final stage.
It'll have installed the final binaries on the Phase3/Releasei(+Asserts)
directory, and that's the one you should use for the test-suite and other
external tests.

To run the script on a specific release candidate run:

```
./test-release.sh \
     -release 3.3 \
     -rc 1 \
     -no-64bit \
     -test-asserts \
     -no-compare-files
```

Each system will require different options. For instance, x86_64 will
obviously not need `-no-64bit` while 32-bit systems will, or the script will
fail.

The important flags to get right are:

- On the pre-release, you should change `-rc 1` to `-final`. On RC2,
  change it to `-rc 2` and so on.
- On non-release testing, you can use `-final` in conjunction with
  `-no-checkout`, but you'll have to create the `final` directory by hand
  and link the correct source dir to `final/llvm.src`.
- For release candidates, you need `-test-asserts`, or it won't create a
  "Release+Asserts" directory, which is needed for release testing and
  benchmarking. This will take twice as long.
- On the final candidate you just need Release builds, and that's the binary
  directory you'll have to pack.
- On macOS, you must export `MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.9` before running
  the script.

This script builds three phases of Clang+LLVM twice each (Release and
Release+Asserts), so use screen or nohup to avoid headaches, since it'll take
a long time.

Use the `--help` option to see all the options and chose it according to
your needs.

### findRegressions-nightly.py

TODO

(test-suite)=

## Test Suite

Follow the [LNT Quick Start Guide](https://llvm.org/docs/lnt/quickstart.html) link on how to set-up the
test-suite

The binary location you'll have to use for testing is inside the
`rcN/Phase3/Release+Asserts/llvmCore-REL-RC.install`.
Link that directory to an easier location and run the test-suite.

An example on the run command line, assuming you created a link from the correct
install directory to `~/devel/llvm/install`:

```
./sandbox/bin/python sandbox/bin/lnt runtest \
    nt \
    -j4 \
    --sandbox sandbox \
    --test-suite ~/devel/llvm/test/test-suite \
    --cc ~/devel/llvm/install/bin/clang \
    --cxx ~/devel/llvm/install/bin/clang++
```

It should have no new regressions, compared to the previous release or release
candidate. You don't need to fix all the bugs in the test-suite, since they're
not necessarily meant to pass on all architectures all the time. This is
due to the nature of the result checking, which relies on direct comparison,
and most of the time, the failures are related to bad output checking, rather
than bad code generation.

If the errors are in LLVM itself, please report every single regression found
as blocker, and all the other bugs as important, but not necessarily blocking
the release to proceed. They can be set as "known failures" and to be
fixed on a future date.

(pre-release-process)=

## Pre-Release Process

When the release process is announced on the mailing list, you should prepare
for the testing, by applying the same testing you'll do on the release
candidates, on the previous release.

You should:

- Download the previous release sources from
  <https://llvm.org/releases/download.html>.
- Run the test-release.sh script on `final` mode (change `-rc 1` to
  `-final`).
- Once all three stages are done, it'll test the final stage.
- Using the `Phase3/Release+Asserts/llvmCore-MAJ.MIN-final.install` base,
  run the test-suite.

If the final phase's `make check-all` failed, it's a good idea to also test
the intermediate stages by going on the obj directory and running
`make check-all` to find if there's at least one stage that passes (helps
when reducing the error for bug report purposes).

(release-process)=

## Release Process

When the Release Manager sends you the release candidate, download all sources,
unzip on the same directory (there will be sym-links from the appropriate places
to them), and run the release test as above.

You should:

- Download the current candidate sources from where the release manager points
  you (ex. <https://llvm.org/pre-releases/3.3/rc1/>).
- Repeat the steps above with `-rc 1`, `-rc 2` etc modes and run the
  test-suite the same way.
- Compare the results, report all errors on Bugzilla and publish the binary blob
  where the release manager can grab it.

Once the release manager announces that the latest candidate is the good one,
you have to pack the `Release` (no Asserts) install directory on `Phase3`
and that will be the official binary.

- Rename (or link) `clang+llvm-REL-ARCH-ENV` to the .install directory
- Tar that into the same name with `.tar.gz` extension from outside the
  directory
- Make it available for the release manager to download

(bug-reporting)=

## Bug Reporting Process

If you found regressions or failures when comparing a release candidate with the
previous release, follow the rules below:

- Critical bugs on compilation should be fixed as soon as possible, possibly
  before releasing the binary blobs.
- Check-all tests should be fixed before the next release candidate, but can
  wait until the test-suite run is finished.
- Bugs in the test suite or unimportant check-all tests can be fixed in between
  release candidates.
- New features or recent big changes, when close to the release, should have
  done in a way that it's easy to disable. If they misbehave, prefer disabling
  them than releasing an unstable (but untested) binary package.