IREE Releasing

This file documents the extant release process that IREE uses. This process and the automation (such as it is) has grown over many years and is due for a refresh. However, in the interests of documenting what exists, we attempt to do so here.

Nightly Core Releases

IREE development is primarily driven via automated nightly release snapshots. These are scheduled automatically each day by the schedule_candidate_release.yml workflow, which selects a green commit from main (for non optional CI tasks), created a tag of the format iree-{X.Y.ZrcYYYYMMDD} and schedules automation to populate the release.

The build_package.yml workflow then runs jobs to do builds for all platforms and packages, finally triggering the validate_and_publish_release.yml workflow.

Release artifacts are uploaded as a GitHub pre release and an index of files is updated by periodic automation at https://iree.dev/pip-release-links.html.

Some debugging notes for this process are available here: https://iree.dev/developers/debugging/releases/.

Nightly Release Packages

A number of packages are produced automatically:

  • iree-dist-*.tar.xz (manylinux x86_64 and aarch64): Install image of the binaries and development assets needed to use or depend on the C/C++ parts of the project.
  • iree-base-compiler: Binary Python wheels
  • iree-base-runtime: Binary Python wheels
  • iree-tools-tf and iree-tools-tflite: Pure Python wheels

Linux Builds

Binary Linux packages are built using a custom manylinux based Docker image hosted here: https://github.com/iree-org/base-docker-images/pkgs/container/manylinux_x86_64 using isolated self-hosted runners (only used for building checked in code) of sufficient size for building large components and GitHub managed runners for smaller components. The project aims to target all non-EOL Python versions with Linux builds on x86_64 and aarch64.

Windows Builds

Windows builds are built using GitHub-hosted runners. Due to the cost, the project aims to target the most recent version of Python only while building version N-1 for the first year of the lifecycle of the next version.

Only the Python iree-base-compiler and iree-base-runtime packages are built for Windows.

The release is published even if the Windows build fails. When this happens, it is fixed forward for the next snapshot.

MacOS Builds

MacOS builds are performed using GitHub-hosted runners. Due to the cost, the project aims to target the most recent version of Python only while building version N-1 for the first year of the lifecycle of the next version.

Only the Python iree-base-compiler and iree-base-runtime packages are built for MacOS.

The release is published even if the MacOS build fails. When this happens, it is fixed forward for the next snapshot.

Retention

The project will keep pre-release tagged releases on its releases page for a minimum of 6 months. Releases older than this can be purged.

Distribution to Package Registries

The following package registry projects are managed as part of the IREE release process:

PyPI

Deprecated projects no longer updated:

Build Promotion

There are presently two build promotion processes documented: