Read release notes (be sure to click the release version heading to see the full notes).

Check out the (brief) generic release notes on joinmastodon.org

Make sure you have a copy of https://gitlab.com/sunbeam.city/mastodon/ cloned locally.

New_instructions_final_FINAL_Nov2025.docx

Theme still broken 😭

export NEW_VERSION=4.5  # change to actual new version, beware wacky branch naming scheme??
git fetch upstream --tags
git checkout sunbeam-changes
git rebase stable-$NEW_VERSION
# fix some probably annoying merge conflicts
git push -f

As of October 2024, these instructions seem to lead to a festival of annoying merge conflicts. See below for alternative.

export NEW_VERSION=4.2.0  # change to actual new version
git checkout trunk
git fetch upstream --tags
git checkout -b merged-$NEW_VERSION
git merge v$NEW_VERSION
git checkout trunk
git merge merged-$NEW_VERSION
git push

Instead (not yet tested 🤡):

export NEW_VERSION=4.2.0  # change to actual new version
git fetch upstream --tags
git checkout sunbeam-changes-new
git pull
git rebase v$NEW_VERSION
git push -f
git checkout trunk
git reset --hard v$NEW_VERSION
git merge sunbeam-changes-new
git push -f

Then check the "Jobs" page on Gitlab, and you should see the Docker image build happily running 🏃 It takes about 8 minutes.

SSH to the server (arkology.sunbeam.city).

Then run:

cd /var/services/mastodon
sudo -u services git pull
sudo -s
export COMPOSE_FILE="compose.yml:compose.sunbeam.yml"
docker-compose pull && \
  docker-compose down && \
  docker-compose up -d
docker-compose run --rm -e SKIP_POST_DEPLOYMENT_MIGRATIONS=true web bundle exec rails db:migrate