How To Release extension

How to release the extension

Start of the release week

• Request a Conga Comic (for Thursday morning).

Day before extension release

• Check the README image is still correct.
• Add entry to changelog & update release notes, with the correction version and release date.
  • The commit should be the last PR to go in.
  • Get the VSIX off of the commits artefacts in Azure
  • Tell the team to stop merging PRs
  • Share VSIX for testing
  • This needs to be done for master (and any other branches we're doing a release for)
• Select ‘Draft a new release’ from https://github.com/IBM-Blockchain/blockchain-vscode-extension/releases
  • In ‘Tag version’ put the new version, e.g v1.0.34, v2.0.0-beta.4
  • The target branch should be master (or another branch depending on which branch we're doing a release for).
  • Release Title should be the same as Tag version, e.g v1.0.34
  • In the main input box, this should be the changelog entry - make sure to select Preview and check that it renders properly
  • If this is for V2, select This is a pre-release - if you forget, this can always be changed afterwards.
  • Press Save draft

Day of extension release

• Upload Conga Comic to https://github.com/congacomic/congacomic.github.io/

  • Should be in the same format as previous commits
  • Matthew or Ed should be informed to approve & merge PR


• Check that draft release renders Conga Comic

• Make a note of installs from https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=IBMBlockchain.ibm-blockchain-platform

• Press Publish Release for draft release

• Note down the number of installs and downloads

• Check Azure job to see if extension published

  • If this failed, click on release and select Delete, click on Tags and delete tag.
  • Fix the problem and/or try again

• Check to see if version bump was successful on GitHub

  • If this failed but the extension released, manually bump up version using lerna version X.X.X

• Make sure the VSIX is installable from VS Code marketplace (this might take a few minutes)

• Post on #ibp-vscode-extension that release is now available - post a link to entry(s) in GitHub releases


• Check whether we have added or updated our telemetry and inform team

• Update extension compatibility wiki page with new entries