Checklists for a successful Matomo release

Work on Beta cycle, towards Release Candidate 1:

• Beta release cycle has started with the first beta release Matomo 4 first beta release #16165
• Keep track of releases notes/ any important changes in this wiki page: https://github.com/matomo-org/matomo/wiki/Matomo-4.0.0-release-notes
• Make a new release of PHP SDK Tracker (there is a 4.x-dev branch there 4.x-dev merged into master, 3.0.0 released and 4.x-dev matomo using it)
• Check this list of Pull requests all Matomo repositories, where the milestone is set to Current sprint
• Triage all PRs not scheduled yet, or close (see also issues without milestone)
• Check all 3.x and 4.x branches include the same changes in all plugins
• Check each plugin has a release for the most recent changes in 4.x-dev
• Tag a new release for matomo-org/referrer-spam-blacklist and matomo-org/searchengine-and-social-list
• Fetch our latest and greatest home-made libraries with composer update matomo-org/referrer-spam-blacklist matomo-org/searchengine-and-social-list matomo-org/matomo-php-tracker matomo-org/component-network,matomo-org/component-ini,matomo-org/component-decompress,matomo-org/component-cache
• Fetch the latest composer libraries for all with composer update
• Up to date submodules
• Make CI builds of our official plugins matomo-org/plugin-* all green
• Tag the RC candidate
• Check that the build is green
• Package & release the Release Candidate
• Post sticky thread in forum about RC
• Let translators know about the new RC by posting an announcement here
• inform RC release on social media
• update tag manager submodule

Look for issues:

• Forum support: regularly check all posts in Support & Bugs forum
• Forum General questions: look for bugs & regressions in General questions forum
• Backlog grooming (Matomo core): check issues without milestone and PRs if any one should be fixed in this release
• Check this list of issues across all Matomo repositories, where the milestone is set to Current sprint

The final checks before the stable release:

• Release candidate cycle (at least 1 week cycle)
• Fix all remaining issues in the milestone
• All open source plugins builds are green on master with latest RC
• Plugins that needed a version bump are now released on the marketplace
• Synchronise translations from transifex
• Submodules are up to date
• triple check 3.14.1 changes are in 4.x such as Backport userId to overwrite visitorId feature #16226
• Announce Long Term Support version refs Announce LTS for Matomo 3 #15920

Prepare the Changelog entry:

• Mark that the release has a major DB upgrade
• Ensure that all PRs merged into the 4.x-dev base branch but that don't have a 4.x milestone set yet will be set with a 4.0.0 milestone
• Use our github changelog generator to generate the changelog using this config.js. Set milestones to ignore to 3.*and look at all closed issues since Jan 14th 2020 (first commit to 4.x-dev was on Jan 14th).
• Add to changelog any new issues or FAQ added since first RC
• Add to changelog the security issues fixed, if any (eg. credit UserAgentParserEnhanced test #115 Set client cookies from PiwikTracker.php #114)
• Do not publish publicly the changelog yet. This also ensures security issues are not publicly visible until the stable release.
• Change changelog published date to the release day
• Make it clear/visible that it's important to take a DB backup before the upgrade

Check the developer changelog is complete, by looking over each issue:

• is this issue relevant to developers? let's mention it in the Developer changelog
• is this issue's title descriptive and useful to people scanning our changelog?
• are the right labels applied to the issue? (issues tagged with labels such as Bug, Enhancement, Major are grouped together in the changelog)

Add any new features to the features page

• Identify new features and list them on the Matomo features page.

Merge 3.x-dev branch into master:

• In https://github.com/matomo-org/matomo/settings get an admin to enable "Merge buttons > Allow merge commits"
• Create a Pull request to merge 3.x-dev into master, by clicking on "Merge Pull request > Create a merge commit" (not "Squash & merge")
• In https://github.com/matomo-org/matomo/settings get an admin to disable "Merge buttons > Allow merge commits"

💥 Release 🚀

• Close milestone on Github
• Release publicly the new stable version by running ./scripts/build-package.sh 3.x.y from here and waiting 5 minutes
• In Github release we write

## [Matomo 3.3.0 Changelog](https://matomo.org/changelog/matomo-3-3-0/)

This Github download (below) is only meant for developers and it will require extra work to install it. 
 * Latest stable production release can be found at https://matomo.org/download/ ([learn more](https://matomo.org/docs/installation/)) (recommended)
 * Beta and Release Candidates releases can be found at https://builds.matomo.org/ ([learn more](http://matomo.org/faq/how-to-update/faq_159/))

## List of XXX tickets closed

• Add the list of tickets closed from the changelog into the Github release
• Take screenshots of new features + draft a blog post showcasing what's new
• Create this 'Release Matomo 3.*' issue in the next release milestone