btcd/release

btcd's Reproducible Build System

This package contains the build script that the btcd project uses in order to build binaries for each new release. As of go1.13, with some new build flags, binaries are now reproducible, allowing developers to build the binary on distinct machines, and end up with a byte-for-byte identical binary. However, this wasn't fully solved in go1.13, as the build system still includes the directory the binary is built into the binary itself. As a result, our scripts utilize a work around needed until go1.13.2. Every release should note which Go version was used to build the release, so that version should be used for verifying the release.

Building a New Release

Tagging and pushing a new tag (for maintainers)

Before running release scripts, a few things need to happen in order to finally create a release and make sure there are no mistakes in the release process.

First, make sure that before the tagged commit there are modifications to the CHANGES file committed. The CHANGES file should be a changelog that roughly mirrors the release notes. Generally, the PRs that have been merged since the last release have been listed in the CHANGES file and categorized. For example, these changes have had the following format in the past:

Changes in X.YY.Z (Month Day Year):
  - Protocol and Network-related changes:
    - PR Title One (#PRNUM)
    - PR Title Two (#PRNUMTWO)
    ...
  - RPC changes:
  - Crypto changes:
  ...

  - Contributors (alphabetical order):
    - Contributor A
    - Contributor B
    - Contributor C
    ...

If the previous tag is, for example, vA.B.C, then you can get the list of contributors (from vA.B.C until the current HEAD) using the following command:

git log vA.B.C..HEAD --pretty="%an" | sort | uniq

After committing changes to the CHANGES file, the tagged release commit should be created.

The tagged commit should be a commit that bumps version numbers in version.go and cmd/btcctl/version.go. For example (taken from f3ec130):

diff --git a/cmd/btcctl/version.go b/cmd/btcctl/version.go
index 2195175c71..f65cacef7e 100644
--- a/cmd/btcctl/version.go
+++ b/cmd/btcctl/version.go
@@ -18,7 +18,7 @@ const semanticAlphabet = "0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqr
 const (
 	appMajor uint = 0
 	appMinor uint = 20
-	appPatch uint = 0
+	appPatch uint = 1
 
 	// appPreRelease MUST only contain characters from semanticAlphabet
 	// per the semantic versioning spec.
diff --git a/version.go b/version.go
index 92fd60fdd4..fba55b5a37 100644
--- a/version.go
+++ b/version.go
@@ -18,7 +18,7 @@ const semanticAlphabet = "0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqr
 const (
 	appMajor uint = 0
 	appMinor uint = 20
-	appPatch uint = 0
+	appPatch uint = 1
 
 	// appPreRelease MUST only contain characters from semanticAlphabet
 	// per the semantic versioning spec.

Next, this commit should be signed by the maintainer using git commit -S. The commit should be tagged and signed with git tag <TAG> -s, and should be pushed using git push origin TAG.

Building a release on macOS/Linux/Windows (WSL)

No prior set up is needed on Linux or macOS is required in order to build the release binaries. However, on Windows, the only way to build the release binaries at the moment is by using the Windows Subsystem Linux. One can build the release binaries following these steps:

1. git clone https://github.com/btcsuite/btcd.git
2. cd btcd
3. ./release/release.sh <TAG> # <TAG> is the name of the next release/tag

This will then create a directory of the form btcd-<TAG> containing archives of the release binaries for each supported operating system and architecture, and a manifest file containing the hash of each archive.

Pushing a release (for maintainers)

Now that the directory btcd-<TAG> is created, the manifest file needs to be signed by a maintainer and the release files need to be published to GitHub.

Sign the manifest-<TAG>.txt file like so:

gpg --sign --detach-sig manifest-<TAG>.txt

This will create a file named manifest-<TAG>.txt.sig, which will must be included in the release files later.

Note before publishing

Before publishing, go through the reproducible build process that is outlined in this document with the files created from release/release.sh. This includes verifying commit and tag signatures using git verify-commit and git verify-tag respectively.

Now that we've double-checked everything and have all of the necessary files, it's time to publish release files on GitHub. Follow this documentation to create a release using the GitHub UI, and make sure to write release notes which roughly follow the format of previous release notes. This is different from the CHANGES file, which should be before the tagged commit in the git history. Much of the information in the release notes will be the same as the CHANGES file. It's important to include the Go version used to produce the release files in the release notes, so users know the correct version of Go to use to reproduce and verify the build. When following the GitHub documentation, include every file in the btcd-<TAG> directory.

At this point, a signed commit and tag on that commit should be pushed to the main branch. The directory created from running release/release.sh should be included as release files in the GitHub release UI, and the manifest-<TAG>.txt file signature, called manifest-<TAG>.txt.sig, should also be included. A release notes document should be created and written in the GitHub release UI. Once all of this is done, feel free to click Publish Release!

Verifying a Release

With go1.13, it's now possible for third parties to verify release binaries. Before this version of go, one had to trust the release manager(s) to build the proper binary. With this new system, third parties can now independently run the release process, and verify that all the hashes of the release binaries match exactly that of the release binaries produced by said third parties.

To verify a release, one must obtain the following tools (many of these come installed by default in most Unix systems): gpg/gpg2, shashum, and tar/unzip.

Once done, verifiers can proceed with the following steps:

1. Acquire the archive containing the release binaries for one's specific operating system and architecture, and the manifest file along with its signature.
2. Verify the signature of the manifest file with gpg --verify manifest-<TAG>.txt.sig. This will require obtaining the PGP keys which signed the manifest file, which are included in the release notes.
3. Recompute the SHA256 hash of the archive with shasum -a 256 <filename>, locate the corresponding one in the manifest file, and ensure they match exactly.

At this point, verifiers can use the release binaries acquired if they trust the integrity of the release manager(s). Otherwise, one can proceed with the guide to verify the release binaries were built properly by obtaining shasum and go (matching the same version used in the release):

4. Extract the release binaries contained within the archive, compute their hashes as done above, and note them down.
5. Ensure go is installed, matching the same version as noted in the release notes.
6. Obtain a copy of btcd's source code with git clone https://github.com/btcsuite/btcd and checkout the source code of the release with git checkout <TAG>.
7. Proceed to verify the tag with git verify-tag <TAG> and compile the binaries from source for the intended operating system and architecture with BTCDBUILDSYS=OS-ARCH ./release/release.sh <TAG>.
8. Extract the archive found in the btcd-<TAG> directory created by the release script and recompute the SHA256 hash of the release binaries (btcd and btcctl) with shasum -a 256 <filename>. These should match exactly as the ones noted above.