Hi all!
Since the 1.2.0 release is about to come out, I would like to propose a
change in the way we do releases in the Flink community.
In my opinion, the current model leads to dissatisfaction among users and
contributors, because releases are really not predictable. A recent example
for the issues with our current model are the FLIP-6 changes we wanted to
merge to master, a few weeks before the first RC for 1.2.0. Also, there
were some emails on the mailing lists asking for a release date.
In order to change that, I’m proposing to follow a strictly time-based
release model. Other open source projects like Ubuntu, Cassandra, Spark or
Kafka are following that model as well, and I think we should try it out as
an experiment for the 1.3.0 release.
I’m proposing to:
-
Do a Flink release every 4 months
-
Cycle:
-
3 months development
-
1 month before the release: Feature freeze. Create release branch
with RC0, start testing. Only fixes, tests and minor improvements are
allowed in.
-
2 weeks before the release: Code freeze. Start voting. Only fixes for
blockers are allowed in.
-
Forbid blocking a release because a feature is not done yet.
-
Features are merged to master, when they are tested and documented, to
have an always stable master
-
Bugfix releases are done as needed.
-
Old releases are supported for 6 months by the Flink community with
critical bug fixes
This means, that we would have the following release dates:
(Flink 1.3.0 by end of January 2017)
Flink 1.4.0 by end of May 2017
Flink 1.5.0 by end of September 2017
Flink 1.6.0 by end of January 2018
I’ve put some more details including some pro’s and con’s into our wiki.
The page is based on Kafka’s time-based release wiki page (Kafka also
recently started following a strictly time-based model)
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/FLINK/Time-based+releases
Once we’ve agreed on following that model, I’ll update the release plan
page accordingly:
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/FLINK/Flink+Release+and+Feature+Plan
Please let me know what you think about this idea!
Regards,
Robert
