# Publishing a new release

Let's create a release from time to time, every 1 or 2 months for instance, to contain enough changes, but not too much.

Below are the notes taken while publishing the release `7.15.0`.

Version numbering is based on [Semantic Versioning 2.0.0](https://semver.org/):
- `7`: a major release. NB: it will probably not change as we don't want to "make incompatible API changes".
- `15`: a minor release
- `0`: patch level (bug fixes)

Create a branch for this new release and change these files:
- `changelog.txt`
  - Type from scratch the list of commits since the last version, and add as prefix for each commit:
    - `+`: new feature
    - `*`: bug fix
    - `!`: feature modification
    - `-`: feature removed
- `zcl_excel_version`
  - Indicate the new version number (NB: the abap2xlsx APACK class uses this version number)
- Restart abapGit to consider the latest version of the changed APACK class, to make the file `.apack-manifest.xml` contain this latest version
  - Push the changes to the repository

With GitHub Desktop (or any Git console or Git user interface), [add the tag](https://docs.github.com/en/desktop/contributing-and-collaborating-using-github-desktop/managing-commits/managing-tags) `7.15.0` to this branch.

Do a pull request.

Wait for approval/commit(s) merged into the master branch.

Now [create the release in GitHub](https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/releasing-projects-on-github/managing-releases-in-a-repository#creating-a-release):
- Click "Releases"
- Click "Draft a new release"
- Click "Choose a tag"
- Type the title, click "Auto-generate release notes" and click "Prview" to verify
- Click "Publish release"
- It's done, zip and tar.gz files are automatically assigned to the release
- The new release appears in the Code home page