Release

The release process for ACK service controller

Remember that there is no single ACK binary. Rather, when we build a release for ACK, that release is for one or more individual ACK service controllers binaries, each of which are installed separately.

This documentation covers the steps involved for officially publishing a ACK service controller’s release artifacts.

Once ACK service controller changes are tested by the service team and they wish to release latest artifacts, service team only needs to create a new release for service-controller github repository with a semver tag (Ex: 0.0.1). Steps below show how to create a new release with semver tag.

Once the git repository is tagged with semver, a postsubmit prowjob builds container image for ACK service controller and publish to public ecr repository public.ecr.aws/aws-controllers-k8s/controller. Same prowjob also publishes the Helm charts for the ACK service controller to public ecr repository public.ecr.aws/aws-controllers-k8s/chart.

What is a release exactly?#

A “release” is the combination of a Git tag containing a SemVer version tag against this source repository and the collection of artifacts that allow the individual ACK service controllers included in that Git commit to be easily installed via Helm.

The Git tag points at a specific Git commit referencing the exact source code that comprises the ACK service controllers in that “release”.

The release artifacts include the following for one or more service controllers:

• Container image
• Helm chart

The container image is built and pushed with an image tag that indicates the release version for the controller along with the AWS service. For example, assume a release semver tag of 0.1.0 that includes service controllers for S3 and SNS. There would be two container images built for this release, one each containing the ACK service controllers for S3 and SNS. The container images would have the following image tags: s3-0.1.0 and sns-0.1.0. Note that the full image name would be public.ecr.aws/aws-controllers-k8s/s3-controller:0.1.0

The Helm chart artifact can be used to install the ACK service controller as a Kubernetes Deployment; the Deployment’s Pod image will refer to the exact container image tag matching the release tag.

Release steps#

0. Rebase $SERVICE-controller repo with latest code:

cd $GOSRC/github.com/aws-controllers-k8s
export SERVICE=s3
cd $SERVICE-controller
git fetch --all --tags
# Optionally fetch and rebase the latest code generator
cd ../code-generator
git checkout main && git fetch --all --tags && git rebase upstream/main

1. Navigate to $SERVICE-controller repo and check out a git branch for your release:

cd ../$SERVICE-controller
export RELEASE_VERSION=v0.0.1
git checkout -b release-$RELEASE_VERSION
git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/main release-$RELEASE_VERSION

2. Navigate to code-generator repo and build the release artifacts for the $SERVICE-controller:

cd ../code-generator
make build-controller

3. Navigate to $SERVICE-controller repo to review the release artifacts that were built for each service by looking in the helm directory:

cd ../$SERVICE-controller
git diff

4. Commit the generated release artifacts and create a pull request:

git commit -a -m "release artifacts for release $RELEASE_VERSION"
git push origin release-$RELEASE_VERSION

5. Get your pull request reviewed and merged. After merge, tag is automatically applied and pushed.

6. git tag operation (applied automatically in last step) triggers a postsubmit prowjob which builds container image and then publishes both container image and Helm chart to public ECR repository. Service team can see the release prowjobs, their status and logs at https://prow.ack.aws.dev/

Edit this page on GitHub