I'd have a preference for 6 month releases. Releases are a lot of work and I'd prefer to spread that over fewer iterations per year.
And I would just call them all major releases (versioning aside). I'm thinking of something like Fedora. We can independently decide to do minor releases (presumably no features) in between the majors. -kevin > > Digging this out of the past, IIRC, we never got around to resolving > > the time period for releases. We should come to a conclusion on this > > topic! I'd like to propose that we follow a 4 month release cycle for > > non-bug fix releases. > > > > Generally, it would mean a schedule that would look something like > > this (M=Month and W=Week): > > M1 through M2 - Features are being developed in branches, and merged > > into master over the course of these two months > > M2 W4 - Feature freeze (and release branch is cut). > > M3 W1 through M4 W1 - Doc Updates and Testing > > M4 W1 - Docs Freeze > > M4 W2 - Final regression testing / bug fixes / doc fixes > > M4 W3 - First RC cut and opened for voting... Wash rince repeat until > > an RC is voted to be released > > > > This proposal might lean a bit heavily towards documentation and > > testing, but my opinion is that features are going to be developed > > outside of this release cycle. What matters, is when they land in > > master, and when they are scheduled to be released. IMO, this type of > > schedule provides us with the ability to have predictable periods of > > time for stabilization and documentation. > > > > If the actual time period of the release is something other than 4 > > months, then I would argue for a similar schedule in the ramp up to > > the first RC. > > > > If we can reach a consensus on this, I'll be happy to draft up a > > schedule with specific dates for our 4.1.0 release. > > > > Thoughts, comments, flames? > > > > -chip > > > > > * What the version number for the first Apache release should be (to > > > be fair we haven't really discussed this.) > > > > > > So lets start with the easy one, the version number - should we > > > target > > > 3.1.0 or 4.0.0 or something else entirely? I could be swayed either > > > way. > > > > > > On the release time period - as a packager for 20-30 packages in > > > Fedora I am certainly sympathetic to release cycles, and realize > > > that virtually all of the community distros (save Debian which is on > > > a two year release cycle) are on a 6 month cycle. That said I don't > > > know that we can necessarily be married to what the distros are > > > doing. I also look at projects like subversion which are tossing out > > > releases approximately every 60 days - and I don't see any distro > > > that doesn't carry subversion (though admittedly very different > > > projects in virtually every respect) I think every 3-4 months makes > > > sense to me, but again that's just me - gives us a slightly faster > > > iteration but hopefully not removing towards an unmanageable release cycle > speed. > > > > > > Another question is - how long do we support any given release > > > line......e.g. if I embark on 5.2.0 (completely made up version > > > number, but assuming the above version scheme) how long will I be > > > guaranteed bugfixes for 5.2.x. Perhaps it's too soon to even ask > > > that question - we haven't even pushed a single release out, but > > > something to think about. > > > > > > Thoughts, comments, flames? > > > > > > --David > > > > >
