Merge pull request #145 from jafingerhut/add-docs-on-publishing-new-python-package

Add a new README file on publishing a new version of the Python package

Author: jafingerhut

README-publish-python-package.md

@@ -0,0 +1,57 @@
+# Notes on publishing new version of Python package for p4runtime-shell
+
+Prerequisites: You must have a Github user account that has privileges
+to push new tags to this repository.  This might only be Github
+accounts with administration privileges on the repository.
+
+Run these commands:
+```
+git clone [email protected]:p4lang/p4runtime-shell
+cd p4runtime-shell
+git tag -a v<version-string> -m "Version <version-string> - <version description>"
+git push origin v<version-string>
+```
+
+Example for releasing version 0.0.5 with comment "Version 0.0.5 - Add
+eburst":
+```
+git clone [email protected]:p4lang/p4runtime-shell
+cd p4runtime-shell
+git tag -a v0.0.5 -m "Version 0.0.5 - Add eburst"
+git push origin v0.0.5
+```
+
+To verify whether this successfully triggers creating a new release on
+PyPI:
+
++ Go to https://github.com/p4lang/p4runtime-shell
++ Click the "Actions" link near the top of the page.
++ Verify that the most recent workflow was started near the time you
+  did the `git push` command above, that it has the
+  `v<version-string>` in the column to the left of the start time, and
+  to the left of that is a reasonable-looking commit description for
+  the commit with that version.
++ After a few minutes, check the pypi.org page for the p4runtime-shell
+  package and verify that the new version is the most recent one
+  mentioned: https://pypi.org/project/p4runtime-shell/
+
+If you further wish to test installing this package on a development
+system that has the Python3 `venv` virtual environment package
+installed:
+
+```bash
+python3 -m venv $HOME/venv-test-p4runtime-shell-install
+source $HOME/venv-test-p4runtime-shell-install/bin/activate
+pip list
+pip install p4runtime-shell
+pip list
+```
+
+The `p4runtime-shell` with the new latest version should have been
+installed, along with many packages it depends upon.
+
+Note: The reason that pushing a tag to this repository causes a new
+release to be published to pypi.org is because of the Github action
+defined in the file
+[`.github/workflows/pypi.yml`](.github/workflows/pypi.yml) of this
+repository.