Ok, summarizing again after feedback from Simon, Caty and Marius, here’s the proposal;
* Duration: 11 minor releases (e.g. N.0 till N.10), one each month, from January to November. * The last month of the year, December sees 2 bug fix releases, to stabilize the cycle: N.10.1 and N.10.2. The releases are supposed to contain mostly bug fixes. ** Note that the N.10.2 release can happen on the first days of January to account for end of year holidays but it should not go beyond the 3rd of January. ** Work for N+1.0 starts once N.10.2 has been released. * When N.10.2 is released we announce it: ** Send mail mentioning that the cycle is over and encourage users to start using N.10.2 ** In that mail, explain all the major features that were implemented during that release cycle (make a special Release Notes for a Cycle) * We announce the new LTS (N.10.x) once N+1.0 is released. Rationale: ** We need to have feedback on a release before it can be considered super stable and thus we usually need a few bug fix releases before a version can be considered a good LTS. This gives us one month to release additional bugfix releases for N.10.x in case it’s needed. ** This also allows us to always support 3 branches: *** LTS branch *** Stable branch *** master (latest SNAPSHOT) Note that I hesitated to announce the LTS when we released N.10.2 but after thinking about it, I think it’s better to continue announcing it only when N+1.0 is released (i.e. at end of January). I have modified https://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Community/VersioningAndReleasePractices?viewer=changes&rev1=14.1&rev2=15.1 already. Once I have the final validation this is ok, I’m redo the screenshot at https://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/download/Community/VersioningAndReleasePractices/releasecycle.png Thanks -Vincent > On 19 Nov 2018, at 17:13, Vincent Massol <vinc...@massol.net> wrote: > > Hi devs, > > Some devs mentioned it’s too hard to release the N.11 release since it > happens around Christmas every year. > > Here’s a proposal: > > * Shorten the cycle to 11 releases instead of 12. > * Release N.9 at end of Nov > * Release N.10 at end of first week of Jan. Note: N.10RC1 would be released > mid December (about 17th of Dec to have 3 weeks of RC). > * Release N+1.0 at end of February. Start of N+1.0 work > > Pros: > * No release during Christmas, yeah :) > * More time to prepare the first LTS bugfix release, i.e. N.10.1, which can > be done during the month of January. > * More time for the first released of N+1 (i.e. N+1.0). This is important > since that’s the release where we can do heavy refactoring and it’s not bad > to get some more time. > > Cons: > * One less release > > WDYT? Do you see other cons? > > Thanks > -Vincent >
