Creating Candela releases¶

To perform a new release of Candela, please follow these steps. This assumes that the code on master is ready to be turned into a new release (i.e., it passes all tests and includes all new functionality desired for the new release). In this example, we will pretend that the new release version number will be 1.2.0.

Create a new release branch, named release-1.2.0:
```
git checkout -b release-1.2.0 master
```
Bump the version number to 1.2.0 by editing package.json. Make a commit with the commit message “Bump version number for release” and push the branch:
```
vim package.json
git commit -am 'Bump version number for release'
git push -u origin release-1.2.0
```
Make a new local branch to save your spot in the commit tree here. Be sure your checkout remains on release-1.2.0. You can do this with:
```
git branch save-point
```
Build the distribution files by using the “production” NPM script:
```
npm run build:production
```
This will create a dist directory containing two JavaScript files, a regular and a minified version.

Commit the production files and push again.

git add dist
git commit -m 'Add production files for release'
git push

Create a pull request from the release-1.2.0 branch. Make sure you base the PR against the release branch, not against master .
Wait for an “LGTM” message, and then merge the pull request and delete the release-1.2.0 branch.

Check out the release branch, pull, tag a release, push, and then delete the release-1.2.0 branch.

git checkout release
git pull
git tag v1.2.0
git push --tags
git branch -d release-1.2.0

Publish the new package to NPM. You will need to log in with your NPM credentials first.
```
npm login
npm publish
```
Merge the save-point branch into master (do not use a fast-forward merge, since this is a special type of commit to prepare master for development with a new version number, rather than adding any new functionality), push, then delete save-point. Be sure you are not merging release-1.2 or release into master; we do not want the distribution files to enter the mainline development branch.
```
git checkout master
git merge save-point
git branch -d save-point
git push
```

This concludes the release process. You will have a new, tagged release published, with a corresponding commit on the release branch, while master will have the package version number updated, ready for further development.