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Release Channels

Due to the intricate nature of managing indexing operations for multiple blockchains and their associated dependencies, the Launchpad project is a complex system with numerous interdependencies.

For a reminder of the various components within Launchpad and their intricate connections, we recommend revisiting our Intro.

This guide offers a comprehensive walkthrough, outlining the steps, automated and manual, required to introduce a new version release of an application, ie. Erigon, into the launchpad-charts repository as a canary release and ultimately transitioning it to a stable state within its designated launchpad-namespace, such as Ethereum.

The diagram below provides a visual representation illustrating the interdependence and impact of various components and workflows.

Release Channels Flow

From new version to launchpad-namespaces stable

Below you can find a more comprehensive breakdown of the process, divided into automated workflows within launchpad-charts and launchpad-namespaces, as well as manual operator steps. This process guides the transition of a new application version from the initial launchpad-charts canary release to its eventual stability within the corresponding launchpad-namespaces. For this walkthrough we will use Erigon as an example.

launchpad-charts

  • On each run, bot looks-up Erigon tags and upon finding a new version, opens a PR into launchpad-charts/charts/erigon
  • The new PR triggers a workflow that publishes a new pre-release into the repo.
  • Another workflow runs and adds the newly released canary chart to the canary Helm repo index

launchpad-namespaces

  • On each run, bot checks for new chart releases and upon finding one, pushes an update branch and opens a new PR to namespaces
  • Bot runs again, auto-merges the PR and creates a tag
  • Workflow runs, updates semver tags

operator

  • Tests the new canary chart release to verify it is working properly, if it is adds commit to PR to set the stable chart release version. Following the merge of this PR, the new stable chart release is automatically issued in draft mode. This step provides the operator with an opportunity to review and manually publish the final release, ensuring precise control and quality assurance in the deployment process.
  • Run task releases:apply -- eth-sepolia which should pick changes from latest ethereum canary tag that would contain new erigon canary chart version (after renovate has run and has picked those up, which it does in 15m intervals).
  • If the previous task runs successfully and workloads appear healthy, the operator updates their helmfile reference to ethereum-canary/latest for eth-mainnet namespace and runs task releases:apply -- eth-mainnet.
  • If task releases:apply -- eth-mainnet succeeds and all workloads are healthy, operator manually tags the ethereum namespace as stable
note

Manually tagging a namespace as stable is an intentional process. Our aim is to ensure that workloads undergo comprehensive testing before being tagged as stable which signals to users readiness for running on mainnet.

Alongside the ability to choose between canary or stable releases based on user risk preferences, we've also enabled the capability to manually override a specific chart version during namespace deployment.

  - path: git::https://github.com/graphops/launchpad-namespaces.git@ethereum/helmfile.yaml?ref=ethereum-canary/latest
    selectorsInherited: true
    values:
      - helmDefaults:
          <<: *helmDefaults
        flavor: "sepolia"
        erigon:
          chartVersion: "0.8.1" # to override the chart version the namespace is setup with
          values:
            statefulNode:
              jwt:
                existingSecret:
                  name: jwt
                  key: jwt
        nimbus:
          values:
            nimbus:
              jwt:
                existingSecret:
                  name: jwt
                  key: jwt

Similarly to being able to override chartVersion, users have the ability to override chartUrl to specify a self-maintained chart, or a chart maintained by a different organisation.