etcher/docs/PUBLISHING.md

Publishing Etcher

This is a small guide to package and publish Etcher to all supported operating systems.

Release Types

Etcher supports production and snapshot release types. Each is published to a different S3 bucket, and production release types are code signed, while snapshot release types aren't and include a short git commit-hash as a build number. For example, 1.0.0-beta.19 is a production release type, while 1.0.0-beta.19+531ab82 is a snapshot release type.

In terms of comparison: 1.0.0-beta.19 (production) < 1.0.0-beta.19+531ab82 (snapshot) < 1.0.0-rc.1 (production) < 1.0.0-rc.1+7fde24a (snapshot) < 1.0.0 (production) < 1.0.0+2201e5f (snapshot). Keep in mind that if you're running a production release type, you'll only be prompted to update to production release types, and if you're running a snapshot release type, you'll only be prompted to update to other snapshot release types.

The build system creates (and publishes) snapshot release types by default, but you can build a specific release type by setting the RELEASE_TYPE make variable. For example:

make <target> RELEASE_TYPE=snapshot
make <target> RELEASE_TYPE=production

We can control the version range a specific Etcher version will consider when showing the update notification dialog by tweaking the updates.semverRange property of package.json.

Update Channels

Etcher has a setting to include the unstable update channel. If this option is set, Etcher will consider both stable and unstable versions when showing the update notifier dialog. Unstable versions are the ones that contain a beta pre-release tag. For example:

• Production unstable version: 1.4.0-beta.1
• Snapshot unstable version: 1.4.0-beta.1+7fde24a
• Production stable version: 1.4.0
• Snapshot stable version: 1.4.0+7fde24a

Signing

OS X

1. Get our Apple Developer ID certificate for signing applications distributed outside the Mac App Store from the balena.io Apple account.

2. Install the Developer ID certificate to your Mac's Keychain by double clicking on the certificate file.

The application will be signed automatically using this certificate when packaging for OS X.

Windows

1. Get access to our code signing certificate and decryption key as a balena.io employee by asking for it from the relevant people.

2. Place the certificate in the root of the Etcher repository naming it certificate.p12.

Packaging

The resulting installers will be saved to dist/out.

Run the following commands:

OS X

make electron-installer-dmg
make electron-installer-app-zip

GNU/Linux

make electron-installer-appimage
make electron-installer-debian

Windows

make electron-installer-zip
make electron-installer-nsis

Publishing to Bintray

We publish GNU/Linux Debian packages to Bintray.

Make sure you set the following environment variables:

• BINTRAY_USER
• BINTRAY_API_KEY

Run the following command:

make publish-bintray-debian

Publishing to S3

• AWS CLI

Make sure you have the AWS CLI tool installed and configured to access balena.io's production or snapshot S3 bucket.

Run the following command to publish all files for the current combination of platform and arch (building them if necessary):

make publish-aws-s3

Also add links to each AWS S3 file in GitHub Releases. See v1.0.0-beta.17 as an example.

Publishing to Homebrew Cask

1. Update Casks/etcher.rb with the new version and sha256

2. Send a PR with the changes above to caskroom/homebrew-cask

Announcing

Post messages to the Etcher forum announcing the new version of Etcher, and including the relevant section of the Changelog.