Currently with the release system, there are the following channels:

Channel	Branch	Notes
stable	main	Should be considered consumer ready.
beta	qa/…	Should be considered almost consumer-ready, but expect bugs.
alpha	qa/…	Should be considered broken and should not be used by consumers.

To create an alpha or beta release:

• Create a branch with the changes starting with qa/.
• Bump the version number in the VERSION file.
• Add a new version section in CHANGELOG.md describing the changes.
• Commit and push to GitHub.
• Wait for CI to finish tests and build a release.
• Navigate to https://github.com/FarmBot/Farmbot-Web-App/releases and edit the automatically created draft release with a new version tag name, title, and description.
• Publish the release.
• Run the following command:

  heroku run rake releases:publish --app=farmbot-staging
  

• Follow the prompts to create a release. Once created, the release will be uploaded and sent out to all devices on that channel according to their update settings.

Publishing a new release to the stable channel will automatically reset all user channel selections to stable. Users who wish to switch back to alpha or beta will need to do so manually.