Deploy a release

It's time to turn your team's hard work into a software release. By this stage, you should be confident that your version is ready to be released — issues are complete, code is checked in, reviewed, and merged, builds are passing, etc. To deploy a release, you would typically release the version in Jira Software, build the release, then deploy the release to the required environment. 

Before you begin

You must be a Jira administrator or a project administrator to do the Jira Software tasks on this page.

Release your version in Jira Software

Before you release your version, check the release status of your version.

Scrum

In a Scrum project, a version is created when you start work on the project. Issues are assigned to the version throughout development. Releasing the version is just a matter of marking the version as released.

1. Go to the project that your version is in, and then click Releases > your desired version.

2. On the version page, click the Release button.

3. The release dialog will be displayed.

4. Enter the details for the release, then click the Release button.

If there are unresolved issues, you can choose to ignore these issues and proceed with the release, or move them to a later version.

Releasing a version on a Scrum board marks the version as released. It doesn't automatically modify the issues in the version in any way.

Kanban

In a Kanban project, the version will contain all issues that are 'Done' (i.e. in the right-most column) at that time.

1. Go to the project that your version is in.

2. Click Kanban board.

3. Click the Release menu. A list of unreleased versions will be displayed, depending on the versions that are set for the issues in the right-most column. If there are no versions set in the issues, you can choose to release the issues to a new version.

4. Select the version to release. The release dialog will be displayed.

5. Enter the details for the release, then click Release.

Releasing a version on a Kanban board does the following:

• For all issues that are 'Done', sets the Fix Version to the version that you just created or selected. 

• Marks the version as released.

As a result, the issues should disappear from the board, as the default Work Sub-Filter for a Kanban board only shows issues that have no Fix Version, or issues with a Fix Version that is unreleased. If an issue has multiple Fix Versions, it will only disappear from the board once all versions are released.

Build the release

The next step is to build the release. A release is essentially a snapshot of the artifact(s) and related metadata that will be deployed. A release is created from a single build.

If you have connected Jira Software to Bamboo, you can automatically run a Bamboo build when you release a version. Otherwise, if you haven't connected Jira Software to Bamboo, or you are using a different build tool, you will need to run your builds independently.

Learn more: Running a Bamboo build when releasing a version

Deploy the release

Once you have built your artifacts, you need to deploy them to the required environment. You may do a few deployments to different environments (e.g. test, staging, etc) before releasing it to your customers.

If you are using Bamboo, deployment projects make it simple for you to deploy your artifacts to different environments. Otherwise, you will need to manually copy the files across environments.

Learn more: Deployment projects