# Zed Releases Read about Zed's [release channels here](https://zed.dev/faq#what-are-the-release-channels). ## Wednesday Release Process You will need write access to the Zed repository to do this. Credentials for various services used in this process can be found in 1Password. Use the `releases` Slack channel to notify the team that releases will be starting. This is mostly a formality on Wednesday's minor update releases, but can be beneficial when doing patch releases, as other devs may have landed fixes they'd like to cherry pick. --- 1. Checkout `main` and ensure your working copy is clean. 1. Run `git fetch && git pull` to ensure you have the latest commits locally. 1. Run `git fetch --tags --force` to forcibly ensure your local tags are in sync with the remote. 1. Run `./script/get-stable-channel-release-notes`. - Follow the instructions at the end of the script and aggregate the release notes into one structure. 1. Run `./script/bump-zed-minor-versions`. - Push the tags and branches as instructed. 1. Run `./script/get-preview-channel-changes`. - Take the script's output and build release notes by organizing each release note line into a category. - Use a prior release for the initial outline. - Make sure to append the `Credit` line, if present, to the end of the release note line. 1. Once release drafts are up on [GitHub Releases](https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/releases), paste both preview and stable release notes into each and **save**. - **Do not publish the drafts!** 1. Check the release assets. - Ensure the stable and preview release jobs have finished without error. - Ensure each draft has the proper number of assets—releases currently have 10 assets each. - Download the artifacts for each release draft and test that you can run them locally. 1. Publish the drafts. - Publish stable and preview drafts, one at a time. - Use [Vercel](https://vercel.com/zed-industries/zed-dev) to check the progress of the website rebuild. The release will be public once the rebuild has completed. 1. Post the stable release notes to social media. - Bluesky and X posts will already be built as drafts in [Buffer](https://buffer.com). - Publish both, one at a time, ensuring both are posted to each respective platform. 1. Send the stable release notes email. - The email broadcast will already be built as a draft in [Kit](https://kit.com). 1. Build social media posts based on the popular items in preview. - Draft the copy in the [tweets](https://zed.dev/channel/tweets-23331) channel. - Create the preview media (videos, screenshots). - For features that you film videos around, try to create alternative photo-only versions to be used in the email, as videos and GIFs aren't great for email. - Store all created media in `Feature Media` in our Google Drive. - Build X and Bluesky post drafts (copy and media) in [Buffer](https://buffer.com), to be sent for next week's stable release. **Note: These are preview items and you may discover bugs.** **This is a very good time to report these findings to the team!** 1. Build email based on the popular items in preview. - You can reuse the copy and photo media from the preview social media posts. - Create a draft email in [Kit](https://kit.com), to be sent for next week's stable release. ## Patch Release Process If your PR fixes a panic or a crash, you should cherry-pick it to the current stable and preview branches. If your PR fixes a regression in recently released code, you should cherry-pick it to preview. You will need write access to the Zed repository to do this: --- 1. Send a PR containing your change to `main` as normal. 1. Once it is merged, cherry-pick the commit locally to either of the release branches (`v0.XXX.x`). - In some cases, you may have to handle a merge conflict. More often than not, this will happen when cherry-picking to stable, as the stable branch is more "stale" than the preview branch. 1. After the commit is cherry-picked, run `./script/trigger-release {preview|stable}`. This will bump the version numbers, create a new release tag, and kick off a release build. - This can also be run from the [GitHub Actions UI](https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/actions/workflows/bump_patch_version.yml): ![](https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/assets/1486634/9e31ae95-09e1-4c7f-9591-944f4f5b63ea) 1. Once release drafts are up on [GitHub Releases](https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/releases), proofread and edit the release notes as needed and **save**. - **Do not publish the drafts, yet.** 1. Check the release assets. - Ensure the stable / preview release jobs have finished without error. - Ensure each draft has the proper number of assets—releases currently have 10 assets each. - Download the artifacts for each release draft and test that you can run them locally. 1. Publish stable / preview drafts, one at a time. - Use [Vercel](https://vercel.com/zed-industries/zed-dev) to check the progress of the website rebuild. The release will be public once the rebuild has completed. ## Nightly release process In addition to the public releases, we also have a nightly build that we encourage employees to use. Nightly is released by cron once a day, and can be shipped as often as you'd like. There are no release notes or announcements, so you can just merge your changes to main and run `./script/trigger-release nightly`.