Hi, We shouldn't release just for releases sake. Are there enough new features and are they working well enough (quality!).
The big feature from our perspective for 5.0 is ACCORD (CEP-15) and I would advocate to delay until this has sufficient quality to be in production. Just because something is released doesn't mean anyone is gonna use it. To add some operator perspective: Every time there is a new release we need to decide 1) are we supporting it 2) which other release can we deprecate and potentially migrate people - which is also a tough sell if there are no significant features and/or breaking changes. So from my perspective less frequent releases are better - after all we haven't gotten around to support 4.1 🙂 The 5.0 release is also coupled with deprecating 3.11 which is what a significant amount of people are using - given 4.1 took longer I am not sure how many people are assuming that 5 will be delayed and haven't made plans (OpenJDK support for 8 is longer than Java 17 🙂) . So being a bit more deliberate with releasing 5.0 and having a longer beta phase are all things we should consider. My 2cts, German From: Benedict <bened...@apache.org> Sent: Wednesday, March 1, 2023 5:59 AM To: dev@cassandra.apache.org <dev@cassandra.apache.org> Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: [DISCUSS] Next release date It doesn’t look like we agreed to a policy of annual branch dates, only annual releases and that we would schedule this for 4.1 based on 4.0’s branch date. Given this was the reasoning proposed I can see why folk would expect this would happen for the next release. I don’t think there was a strong enough commitment here to be bound by, it if we think different maths would work better. I recall the goal for an annual cadence was to ensure we don’t have lengthy periods between releases like 3.x to 4.0, and to try to reduce the pressure certain contributors might feel to hit a specific release with a given feature. I think it’s better to revisit these underlying reasons and check how they apply than to pick a mechanism and stick to it too closely. The last release was quite recent, so we aren’t at risk of slow releases here. Similarly, there are some features that the *project* would probably benefit from landing prior to release, if this doesn’t push release back too far. On 1 Mar 2023, at 13:38, Mick Semb Wever <m...@apache.org> wrote:  My thoughts don't touch on CEPs inflight. For the sake of broadening the discussion, additional questions I think worthwhile to raise are… 1. What third parties, or other initiatives, are invested and/or working against the May deadline? and what are their views on changing it? 1a. If we push branching back to September, how confident are we that we'll get to GA before the December Summit? 2. What CEPs look like not landing by May that we consider a must-have this year? 2a. Is it just tail-end commits in those CEPs that won't make it? Can these land (with or without a waiver) during the alpha phase? 2b. If the final components to specified CEPs are not approved/appropriate to land during alpha, would it be better if the project commits to a one-off half-year release later in the year?
