Release Kdenlive ##.##

Introduction

Kdenlive is part of KDE Gear which means furtunately a lot of work is done by the KDE release team. The KDE release team cares of tagging and releasing the source code tarballs to https://downloads.kde.org. However, the Kdenlive team still needs to take care of writing a blog post for the release and of releasing the binaries like AppImage, Windows (*.exe) and macOS (*.dmg). This process is tracked below.

The schedule of KDE Gear can be found at https://community.kde.org/Schedules

Tasks

Preparation (~ 2 weeks before release)

For major releases: if it was decided to change the splash screen, make sure it has been merged/committed
Update MLT and other dependencies in Craft
Run the render test suite on stable nightly
Open a draft merge request on the Kdenlive website for the announcement

Release Binaries

Start with the following steps after the source tarballs have been released by the KDE release team:

Open a pull request to update Kdenlive and dependencies on Flathub. Check if there is already a feasible pull request by another person or the flathub-bot.
Run again the render test suite on stable nightly
Download binaries right after the test suite succeeded from https://cdn.kde.org/ci-builds/multimedia/kdenlive/
Create Windows standalone version:
- Extract the 7zip file
- Put a file qt.conf with the following content into the bin folder (to help Qt find qwindows.dll in platforms/folder, see https://github.com/owncloud/client/issues/7034):
```
[Paths]
Plugins = .
```
- Compress as self-extracting exe file with 7zip
Upload all binaries for https://download.kde.org/stable/kdenlive/. The structure and file names should be like:
- 25.08/
  - linux/
    - kdenlive-25.08.0-x86_64.AppImage
  - macOS/
    - kdenlive-25.08.0-arm64.dmg
    - kdenlive-25.08.0-x86_64.dmg
  - windows/
    - kdenlive-25.08.0.exe
    - kdenlive-25.08.0_standalone.exe
Wait for sysadmins to do the actual publishing

Announcement and Documentation

Write the announcement (see here for technical instructions)
1. Take the input from the full log with all commits
2. Start with a general paragraph or two about what has been done in the release cycle
3. Then add detailed sections of each feature with a structure like this:
  - Title of feature
  - Explanation
  - Descriptive images
4. It is good practice to put a list of important fixes or changes after all the features.
5. Finish it with the full log (to be put to changelog.md)
After binaries are published: Publish the announcement by merging the merge request. Make sure date and time are set correctly in UTC in the date tag of the release announcement. It needs to be set to a time prior the merge time, otherwise it won't show up.
Merge documentation update
Notify KDE Promo
Publish on social media
- Verify a post on KDE Discuss has automatically been created (triggered when the website post goes online)
- Mastodon
- Bluesky
- Reddit (Kdenlive, Linux, KDE)
- Discord
- For important releases: contact websites like
  - OMG! Ubuntu
  - Libre Arts
- Kdenlive Telegram
- Kdenlive Matrix
- Other open-source Telegram channels

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