For context for others - Rajiv & his team at NetApp are new to the community, learning their way in the community and building their storage plugin for CloudStack; they were encouraged to join/ask on users ML. Let's be kind and support them.
Hi Rajiv, In addition to what Joao said, I recommend reading: https://theapacheway.com/ https://cloudstack.apache.org/contribute https://cloudstack.apache.org/developers/ https://cloudstack.apache.org/mailing-lists - join the dev ML I had written some ideas in hackerbook, on how one can contribute: https://github.com/shapeblue/hackerbook/blob/main/2-dev.md#contributing-to-cloudstack We generally aim for two releases a year, for example 4.21 (regular, non-LTS) is in the works this week and hopefully 4.22 (LTS) by end of the year, and while there is no set rule, they are generally 4-6 months apart. Most users tend to prefer LTS releases (https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/CLOUDSTACK/LTS). For a specific target release, the release managers (RMs) generally volunteer themselves as RM and share the timeline on dev@ mailing list (https://cloudstack.apache.org/mailing-lists). RMs generally are committers and PMC members. For example, on dev@ ML you'll currently find proposed timeline for 4.20.2 and 4.21 releases. Depending on how ready you are with your storage plugin, generally speaking once you're code-complete and you can raise a pull request https://github.com/apache/cloudstack — your best target would the next major release of CloudStack. For example, if you're ready with your storage plugin now and say can submit the work in coming days then 4.22 (due Nov-Dec 2025) is the best you can aim for. But it depends, esp. how quickly you're able to work on review comments by the dev community on your pull request. Generally, our release managers and community at large are supportive of contributors — but it needs to reciprocate on both ways. Practically, many storage contributors/vendors also ship their plugin to their users outside of the upstream release as a jar artifact, generally I've seen many start by creating their plugin on the latest LTS release (for immediate consumption by their stakeholders) and then they'd contribute it to the upstream repo (github.com/apache/cloudstack) targeted for the next release. This is also why their storage plugins (jars) are not melded in the cloudstack (uber) jar (as seen at /usr/share/cloudstack-management/libs). That said, I encourage to always ship via upstream releases (i.e. don't create fork/additional work for yourself). Regards. ________________________________ From: João Jandre <j...@apache.org> Sent: Friday, August 22, 2025 18:52 To: users@cloudstack.apache.org <users@cloudstack.apache.org> Subject: Re: Regarding release cadence of CS Hello, Rajiv CloudStack does not have a set release schedule policy, despite many efforts to create one. We are about to release version 4.21, and the planning for 4.22 has already started, but the precise release date for the next "major" is not set. In any case, the general idea is: if your PR is ready, working and tested, it will be merged to main and will be featured in the next "major" release. Whether this will be 4.22, 4.23 or a later release will depend on when the PR is done and when the community has enough time to review and test your feature. Just for your information, the ML users@cloudstack.apache.org (as well as the others c.a.o) is related to the Apache CloudStack community, not a single person. Furthermore, the release process and project management is done by the PMC, not an individual. Best regards, João On 8/22/25 09:57, Rajiv Jain wrote: > Hi Rohit, > > We are in progress of coming up with NetApp storage plugin. > > Can you please help what deadlines can we target? Which release shall we > target to get Netapp plugin code in ? > > Thanks > Rajiv >
