The publishing bot publishes the code in k8s.io/kubernetes/staging to their own repositories. It guarantees that the master branches of the published repositories are compatible, i.e., if a user go get a published repository in a clean GOPATH, the repo is guaranteed to work.

It pulls the latest k8s.io/kubernetes changes and runs git filter-branch to distill the commits that affect a staging repo. Then it cherry-picks merged PRs with their feature branch commits to the target repo. It records the SHA1 of the last cherrypicked commits in Kubernetes-sha: <sha> lines in the commit messages.

The robot is also responsible to update the go-mod and the vendor/ directory for the target repos.

• Adapt the rules in config/kubernetes-rules-configmap.yaml

  • For Kubernetes, the configuration is located in the kubernetes/kubernetes repository

• For a new repo, add it to the repo list in hack/repos.sh

• Test and deploy the changes

If you're creating a new branch, you need to update the publishing-bot rules to reflect that. For Kubernetes, this means that you need to update the rules.yaml file on the master branch.

For each repository, add a new branch to the branches stanza. If the branch is using the same Go version as the default Go version, you don't need to specify the Go version for the branch (otherwise you need to do that).

If you're updating Go version for the master or release branches, you need to adapt the rules.yaml file in kubernetes/kubernetes on the master branch.

• If you're updating Go version for the master branch, you need to change the default Go version to the new version.
  • If release branches that depend on the default Go version use a different (e.g. old) Go version, you need to explicitly set Go version for those branches (e.g. like here)
• If you're updating Go version for a previous release branch
  • if it's the same version as the default Go version, you don't need to specify the Go version for that branch
  • if it's NOT the same version as the default Go version, you need to explicitly specify the Go version for that branch (e.g. like here)
    • Examples: kubernetes/kubernetes#93998, kubernetes/kubernetes#101232, kubernetes/kubernetes#104226

Currently we don't have tests for the bot. It relies on manual tests:

• Fork the repos you are going the publish.

• Run hack/fetch-all-latest-and-push.sh from the bot root directory to update the branches of your repos. This will sync your forks with upstream. CAUTION: this might delete data in your forks.

• Use hack/create-repos.sh from the bot root directory to create any missing repos in the destination github org.

• Create a config and a corresponding ConfigMap in configs,

  • by copying configs/example and configs/example-configmap.yaml,
  • and by changing the Makefile constants in configs/<yourconfig>
  • and the ConfigMap values in configs/<yourconfig>-configmap.yaml.

• Create a rule config and a corresponding ConfigMap in configs,

  • by copying configs/example-rules-configmap.yaml,
  • and by changing the Makefile constants in configs/<yourconfig>
  • and the ConfigMap values in configs/<yourconfig>-rules-configmap.yaml.

• Deploy the publishing bot by running make from the bot root directory, e.g.

$ make build-image push-image CONFIG=configs/<yourconfig>
$ make run CONFIG=configs/<yourconfig> TOKEN=<github-token>

for a fire-and-forget pod. Or use

$ make deploy CONFIG=configs/<yourconfig> TOKEN=<github-token>

to run a ReplicaSet that publishes every 24h (you can change the INTERVAL config value for different intervals).

This will not push to your org, but runs in dry-run mode. To run with a push, add DRYRUN=false to your make command line.

• Use one of the existing configs and
• launch make deploy CONFIG=configs/kubernetes-nightly

Caution: Make sure that the bot github user CANNOT close arbitrary issues in the upstream repo. Otherwise, github will close, them triggered by Fixes kubernetes/kubernetes#123 patterns in published commits.

Note:: Details about running the publishing-bot for the Kubernetes project can be found in production.md.

To add new branch rules or update go version for configured destination repos, check update-branch-rules.

Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for instructions on how to contribute.

1. Testing: currently we rely on manual testing. We should set up CI for it.
2. Automate release process (tracked at kubernetes/kubernetes#49011): when kubernetes release, automatic update the configuration of the publishing robot. This probably means that the config must move into the Kubernetes repo, e.g. as a .publishing.yaml file.