Zed Releases

Zed currently maintains two public releases for macOS:

• Stable: This is the primary version that people download and use.
• Preview: which receives updates a week ahead of Stable for early adopters.

Typically we cut a new minor release every Wednesday. The current Preview becomes Stable, and the new Preview contains everything on main up until that point.

If bugs are found and fixed during the week, they may be cherry-picked into the release branches and so new patch versions for preview and stable can become available throughout the week.

Wednesday release process

You will need write access to the Zed repository to do this:

• Checkout main and ensure your working copy is clean.
• Run ./script/bump-zed-minor-versions and push the tags and branches as instructed.
• Wait for the builds to appear at https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/releases (typically takes around 30 minutes)
• While you're waiting:
  • Start creating the new release notes for preview. You can start with the output of ./script/get-preview-channel-changes.
  • Start drafting the release tweets.
• Once the builds are ready:
  • Copy the release notes from the previous Preview release(s) to the current Stable release.
  • Download the artifacts for each release and test that you can run them locally.
  • Publish the releases on GitHub.
  • Tweet the tweets (Credentials are in 1Password).

Patch release process

If your PR fixes a panic or a crash, you should cherry-pick it to the current stable and preview branches. If your PR fixes a regression in recently released code, you should cherry-pick it to preview.

You will need write access to the Zed repository to do this:

• Send a PR containing your change to main as normal.
• Leave a comment on the PR /cherry-pick v0.XXX.x. Once your PR is merged, the GitHub bot will send a PR to the branch.
  • In case of a merge conflict, you will have to cherry-pick manually and push the change to the v0.XXX.x branch.
• After the commits are cherry-picked onto the branch, run ./script/trigger-release {preview|stable}. This will bump the version numbers, create a new release tag, and kick off a release build.
  • This can also be run from the GitHub Actions UI:
• Wait for the builds to appear at https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/releases (typically takes around 30 minutes)
• Proof-read and edit the release notes as needed.
• Download the artifacts for each release and test that you can run them locally.
• Publish the release.

Nightly release process

In addition to the public releases, we also have a nightly build that we encourage employees to use. Nightly is released by cron once a day, and can be shipped as often as you'd like. There are no release notes or announcements, so you can just merge your changes to main and run ./script/trigger-release nightly.