Release Process

May 28, 2026 ยท View on GitHub

This describes the steps for making a release.

Create a Release PR

  • Create a branch that will contain changes for the release
  • Update the CHANGELOG.md using the most recent version as a guide
    • Go through the PRs since the last release and add each PR and descriptive text to the Breaking changes, Features, Bug fixes or Build changes sections
  • Update the versions in the 3 main CMakeLists.txt files in the project blocks, where VERSION has the form <major version>.<minor version>
  • Update the version in the Build and Publish Image file, where VERSION has the form <major version>.<minor version>.<patch version>
  • Run the Build & Test workflow in GitHub Actions using the release branch and fix any build errors and warnings
  • Check the runner versions (e.g. windows-2019 and macos-13) in the release.yml workflow file are still available
    • Select the oldest macOS version available to help with compatibility
  • Run the Release workflow in GitHub Actions using the release branch to check it succeeds
    • On the release branch, create a temporary tag and then delete the tag once the workflow succeeds:
export BMX_VERSION=<major version>.<minor version>
git tag -a v${BMX_VERSION} -m "Version ${BMX_VERSION}"
git push origin v${BMX_VERSION}

git push --delete origin v${BMX_VERSION}
git tag -d v${BMX_VERSION}
  • Create and merge a PR for the release branch into main

Create a Release Tag

  • Checkout and fetch the main branch
  • Create a tag with form v<major version>.<minor version>. E.g. run the commands below, replacing <major version>.<minor version> (with no v)
export BMX_VERSION=<major version>.<minor version>
git checkout main
git pull --rebase
git tag -a v${BMX_VERSION} -m "Version ${BMX_VERSION}"
git push origin v${BMX_VERSION}

Create the Release Packages

  • Run the Release workflow in GitHub Actions
  • Download the Artifacts and extract the individual source and binary zips for the release

Create a GitHub Release

  • Create a new release
  • Copy the previous release's text as a starting point
    • Select the v<major version>.<minor version> tag
    • Change the CHANGELOG link
    • Update the zip filenames with the new version
    • Update the compiler versions used for the binaries
      • These can be found in the actions output in the Win64 binary release and MacOS Universal binary release build steps in the 2 jobs of the Release workflow in GitHub Actions
  • Upload the source and binary zips to the release

Create a Docker Image for the GitHub Container Registry