From our (CDT) perspective, 4 month release cycles are too short. The idea is that 6 months gives us two major releases a year.
For more context, here is the proposal we put to the CDT community after our monthly conference call. We didn't really consider whether the train would change as well:
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Hey gang,
We talked about this on our call this morning. There is a lot of interest, and actually always has been, in moving to more frequent release cycle. Yearly is great if you are a stable platform that
doesn't need to change much, but our feeling is that the CDT still has a lot of work left to do.
And I actually think that yearly cycles reduces the appeal of contributing to Eclipse. Who wants to make a contribution and then wait a year to have a release they can use it with. Even the major
Linux distros release semi-yearly.
So here's what we came up with and we need to hear from you and tweak it so that it's captures all our needs (or as many as we can).
- Release in June along with the Eclipse release train as before.
- Release the SR-1 for that release in Sept as before.
- Release a new feature release in December, not too late where it interferes with the holiday season.
- Release the SR-2 for the last June release with the rest of the train in Feb as before to satisfy the needs of people stuck on the older CDT release.
- Release the SR-1 for the December release in March or April.
- Release in June again, and repeat.
So, for example, this year we have:
June – 8.2.0
Sept – 8.2.1
Dec – 8.3.0
Feb – 8.2.2
Mar – 8.3.1
June – 8.4.0
From: cross-project-issues-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx [cross-project-issues-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] on behalf of Konstantin Komissarchik [konstantin.komissarchik@xxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, July 02, 2013 3:39 PM
To: 'Cross project issues'
Subject: Re: [cross-project-issues-dev] 6 month release cycle
In a lot of ways, we already have this with the service releases. A number of projects have shifted to shipping feature-bearing, but compatible releases as
part of SRs. If we wanted to formalize what seems to have evolved organically, we could call June releases “major” and the other two “minor”.
- Konstantin
From: cross-project-issues-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:cross-project-issues-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Doug Schaefer
Sent: Tuesday, July 02, 2013 12:31 PM
To: cross-project-issues-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [cross-project-issues-dev] 6 month release cycle
Hey gang,
We have a discussion going in the CDT community and we are currently planning out how to achieve a 6 month release cycle. The feeling is that we need to get
new features out faster to our users. The year long wait we currently have is making releases sluggish and I fear it's slowing down growth in our community. A 6 month cycle should infuse us with a little more energy, so goes the hope.
I mentioned CDT's plans on twitter and a number of senior members of our larger Eclipse community thought it might be a good idea for other projects at Eclipse
and maybe for the train itself. And I think so too.
Instead of continuing that discussion on twitter, which is fun and everything, I thought we should bring that to a greater audience and see what other projects
thought and whether it's something we should bring to the Planning Council and the rest of the EMO.
I know there are a number of projects already releasing off stream during the year, but bringing things together more often might be a help to many others. But
I'd like to hear your thoughts on that.
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