loki/docs/sources/community/maintaining/release/prepare-release-notes.md

title	description
Prepare Release notes	Prepare Release notes

Prepare Release notes

Release notes are the few key highlights of the release. This is what appears on the release page on Github.

Before you begin

1. Determine the [VERSION_PREFIX]({{< relref "./concepts/version" >}}).

2. The release notes process for Grafana Loki works as follows.

   We have two separate markdown files:

   1. release-notes/next.md to track release notes that are not released yet.
   2. release-notes/v<major>-<minor>.md to track release notes that are part of each specific Loki version.

   Preparing release notes for a specific Loki release at high level is basically two steps:

   1. Add important notes to next.md
   2. And make it available in a specific Loki version.

Steps

1. Discuss with Loki team to finalize what PRs should be part of release notes.

2. Go to the PR and add a label add-to-release-notes. Example PR with label added.

   {{% admonition type="note" %}} Pick any one PR if the changes involves multiple PRs. {{% /admonition %}}

3. The CI process creates a PR to add the original PR to the release notes. Example PR.

4. Review the PR carefully. Update the description, approve and merge.

5. Repeat the steps for all the PRs.

6. Review the final release notes with Loki squad.

7. Create a release notes PR on the main branch. Example PR.

   • Copy next.md file to the new file v<MAJOR>-<MINOR>.md (e.g: v2.9.md)
   • Replace version place holders V?.? with V<MAJOR>.<MINOR> in the new file.
   • Remove all the entries under Features and enhancements, Upgrade Considerations and Bug fixes in next.md file
   • Add an entry for the new version in _index.md as shown in the example PR above. Set the weight for the new file so that the new release notes file appears at the top of the table of contents.
   • Get the PR reviewed and merged.

8. Backport the release notes PR from main to the release-VERSION_PREFIX branch. Example PR.