The release process, including all necessary tests, might take several days and includes fixing bugs that are only discovered in the release testing process. Never ever add new features in this release process, there is the separate "develop" branch which you can use for this purposes.

You must have mdBook installed to make a release. Otherwise the documentation can't be created.

1. Start the release process by executing mvn gitflow:release-startfor a regular release (branched from the develop) or mvn gitflow:hotfix-start for a hotfix that is branched from master. The command will ask you for the new version number, use semantic versioning.
2. Add new changelog entry, if some important information is missing create an enhancement or bugfix issue in GitHub and repeat
   • Get the GitHub Milestone id associated the release (is visible in the URL if you view the issues of the release tracking milestone).
   • execute this script Misc/changelog.py <milestone-id>
   • add the output to the begin of the CHANGELOG file
3. Update and commit license information

mvn license:add-third-party license:download-licenses

1. Build the complete project with tests.

mvn clean
mvn -DskipTests=true install
mvn test

2. Do manual tests. If you have to fix any bug document it in the issue tracker, update the changelog and start over at step 1. If no known bugs are left to fix go to the next section.

1. Finish the release by executing either mvn gitflow:release-finish for regular releases or mvn gitflow:hotfix-finish for hotfixes.
2. Release the staging repository to Maven Central with the Nexus interface: https://oss.sonatype.org/
3. Create a new release on GitHub including the changelog. Upload the binaries from Maven repository to GitHub release as well.