Time-based Software Release Process
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A Time-based Software Release Process is a software release process that ...
References
2017
- https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/FLINK/Time-based+releases
- QUOTE: The benefits of moving to a time based release are:
- A quicker feedback cycle and users can benefit from features shipped quicker
- Predictability for contributors and users:
- Developers and reviewers can decide in advance what release they are aiming for with specific features.
- If a feature misses a release we have a good idea of when it will show up.
- Users know when to expect their features
- Transparency - There will be a published cut-off date (AKA feature freeze) for the release and people will know about it in advance. Hopefully this will remove the contention around which features make it.
- Quality - we've seen issues pop up in release candidates due to last-minute features that didn't have proper time to bake in. More time between feature freeze and release will let us test more, document more and resolve more issues.
- Since nothing is ever perfect, there will be some downsides:
- Most notably, features that miss the feature-freeze date for a release will have to wait few month for the next release. Features will reach users faster overall as per benefit #1, but individual features that just miss the cut will lose out
- More releases a year mean that being a committer is more work - release management is still some headache and we'll have more of those. Hopefully we'll get better at it. Also, the committer list is growing and hopefully it will be less than once-a-year effort for each committer.
- For users, figuring out which release to use and having frequent new releases to upgrade to may be a bit confusing.
- Frequent releases mean we need to do bugfix releases for older branches. Right now we only do bugfix releases to latest release.
- QUOTE: The benefits of moving to a time based release are: