Release Process and Schedule¶

Lessons are released on a 6-month release cycle. Lesson releases are named by the year and month they happen, e.g., 2016.05.

Each lesson lives in the gh-pages branch of its own repository.
When a release is made, the lesson Maintainer(s) create a branch named after the release, e.g., 2016.05.
A Release Maintainer generates HTML pages for that release and adds them to the branch.
If there isn”t already a directory for that release in the swc-releases repository, the Release Maintainer creates one and adds an index.html page to it.
The Release Maintainer adds a submodule to the release directory of swc-releases that points to the newly-created release branch of the lesson.

More information about lesson releases coming soon!

Lesson Release checklist¶

For each lesson release, copy this checklist to an issue and check off during preparation for release

Scheduled Freeze Date: YYYY-MM-DDScheduled Release Date: YYYY-MM-DD

Checklist of tasks to complete before release:

[ ] check that the learning objectives reflect the content of the lessons
[ ] check that learning objectives are phrased as statements using action words
[ ] check for typos
[ ] check that the live coding examples work as expected
[ ] if example code generates warnings, explain in narrative and instructor notes
[ ] check that challenges and their solutions work as expected
[ ] check that the challenges test skills that have been seen
[ ] check that the setup instructions are up to date (e.g., update version numbers)
[ ] check that data is available and mentions of the data in the lessons are accurate
[ ] check that the instructor guide is up to date with the content of the lessons
[ ] check that all the links within the lessons work (this should be automated)
[ ] check that the cheat sheets included in lessons are up to date (e.g., RStudio updates them regularly)
[ ] check that languge is clear and free of idioms and colloquialisms
[ ] make sure formatting of the code in the lesson looks good (e.g. line breaks)
[ ] check for clarity and flow of narrative
[ ] update README as needed
[ ] fill out “overview” for each module - minutes needed for teaching and exercises, questions and learning objectives
[ ] check that contributor guidelines are clear and consistent
[ ] clean up files (e.g. delete deprecated files, insure filenames are consistent)
[ ] update the release notes (NEWS)
[ ] tag release on GitHub

Information about upcoming lesson releases - coming soon!