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Preparing A Release

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Dave Parker edited this page Aug 11, 2025 · 40 revisions

These notes are primarily intended for reference by the PRISM development team when building and distributing public releases. But, if you are developing your own extension of PRISM and want to package up releases of it, then the sections Building a source distribution and Building a binary distribution may be helpful.

Preliminary steps for public releases

1. Final checks/changes to code

  • Get latest version: git pull
  • Make sure all commits are documented in CHANGELOG.txt
  • Add version number and release date to CHANGELOG.txt
  • Make sure prism -help is up-to-date with all commits
  • Set new version number in prism/Version.java
  • Commit/push

2. Update manual

  • Document changes or new features (on local copy)
  • Set version number on Main/Welcome and Main/AllOnOnePage
  • Upload manual from local copy
  • Download local copy (make doc) and commit/push (git add ../manual/ && git commit -m 'Update manual.' && git push). NB: Change PRISM_MANUAL_WEBSITE in the Makefile to download from the local copy, but doing it from the live one seems to work slightly better, even if the new manual goes live slightly too early.

Building a source distribution

A source distribution is built from a local git checkout. From the prism directory, where PRISM is usually compiled, run:

make release_source

This assembles all the files needed into, for example, release/prism-4.8-src.tar.gz. This is done by taking an archive of the local master branch on git. You can change the branch if you wish, e.g.:

make release_source BRANCH=HEAD
make release_source BRANCH=newfeature

By default, the version number (4.8 above) is automatically extracted from prism/Version.java, but can be overridden if required:

make release_source VERSION=4.8.1
make release_source BRANCH=newfeature VERSION=newfeature

Building a binary distribution

A binary distribution is built from a local copy of the source, either an unzipped source release or a local git checkout. From the prism directory, where PRISM is usually, compiled, run:

make release

This makes sure that PRISM is compiled afresh, builds prism.jar containing all the Java class files, and assembles all the files needed into, for example, release/prism-4.8-mac64-arm.tar.gz. It's advisable to also run at least a few tests to make sure that the compiled code works properly:

etc/tests/run.sh

If building the release on a clean VM, the prism-install-* scripts in etc/scripts install everything that is needed and (optionally) compile the master branch.

PRISM

On (Unbuntu) Linux:

/bin/bash <(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/prismmodelchecker/prism/master/prism/etc/scripts/prism-install-ubuntu) --nobuild

On Windows (in a Command Prompt and Cygwin shell respectively:

"%SystemRoot%\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe" -Command "wget -Uri https://raw.githubusercontent.com/prismmodelchecker/prism/master/prism/etc/scripts/prism-install-windows.bat -Outfile prism-install-windows.bat" && cmd /K .\prism-install-windows.bat

/bin/bash <(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/prismmodelchecker/prism/master/prism/etc/scripts/prism-install-cygwin) --nobuild

And then (all OSs):

cd prism/prism && make release && etc/tests/run.sh

PRISM-games

On (Unbuntu) Linux:

/bin/bash <(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/prismmodelchecker/prism-games/master/prism/etc/scripts/prism-install-ubuntu) --nobuild

On Windows (in a Command Prompt and Cygwin shell respectively:

"%SystemRoot%\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe" -Command "wget -Uri https://raw.githubusercontent.com/prismmodelchecker/prism-games/master/prism/etc/scripts/prism-install-windows.bat -Outfile prism-install-windows.bat" && cmd /K .\prism-install-windows.bat

/bin/bash <(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/prismmodelchecker/prism-games/master/prism/etc/scripts/prism-install-cygwin) --nobuild

And then (all OSs):

cd prism-games/prism && make release && etc/tests/run.sh

Customisations

By default, the version number (4.8 above) is automatically extracted from prism/Version.java, but can be overridden if required:

make release VERSION=4.8.1

The platform name (arm above) is derived automatically from the current build. If you were building, for example, a 32-bit release from a 64-bit OS, you might use:

make release ARCH=

Publishing a Release

  • Push source/binary release files to the web site
  • Update download page
  • Upload new version of online manual (unison)
  • Create a new GitHub release ("Tag version" is e.g. v4.8; no need for "Release title" or description)
  • Set version number suffix in prism/Version.java back to dev

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