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Release Workflow

Use make release to cut a planned release from the develop branch.

What the Script Does​

  1. Verifies you are on develop with a clean working tree.
  2. Pulls the latest develop (or checks out a specific commit if COMMIT_HASH is supplied).
  3. Reads the release version from Maven — strips the -SNAPSHOT suffix (e.g. 1.10.0-SNAPSHOT → 1.10.0).
  4. Shows the last release tag and prompts for confirmation.
  5. Creates release/x.y.z from the current commit.
  6. Updates pom.xml via mvn versions:set, commits, and pushes.
  7. Opens a pull request targeting master via gh pr create.

Release Workflow Diagram​

Release Workflow

Running a Release​

# Standard release from the tip of develop
make release

# Release from a specific commit on develop
make release COMMIT_HASH=abc1234

After the PR Merges​

Once the release PR merges into master, the github-workflows release script takes over and does the following:

  1. Publishes the release artifact — either to AWS CodeArtifact (libraries) or AWS ECR as a Docker image (deployable services).
  2. Creates a git tag and GitHub Release for the release version.
  3. Opens a back-merge PR (merge/x.y.z → develop) and bumps the minor version for the next development sprint (e.g. 1.2.0 → 1.3.0-SNAPSHOT).
Don't skip the back-merge

Approving the back-merge PR is not optional. If you skip it, the version bump never lands in develop — it will stay at the old SNAPSHOT (e.g. 1.2.0-SNAPSHOT) instead of advancing to the next one (e.g. 1.3.0-SNAPSHOT). The next release will be cut from the wrong version.

Always merge the back-merge PR before starting any new feature work.