This is exactly the type of conversation we need to be having. Thanks Konstantin for the out-of-box thinking and everyone else for great ideas / feedback. I think no matter what we do, we still need 'service releases' or multiple streams, but there is nothing here that precludes that.
While I do think most of this could be automated -- including the creation of the packages -- we need to question if this will inevitably reduce quality. If packages are just a random collection of everyones latest stuff, automatically built on a monthly basis, we can't give much (if any) guarantee about the quality of those integrations. The original proposal included 'testing the release', but I don't think the package maintainers can be expected to test each package each month on each platform.
This type of release also means we can't ramp-down as a group. As soon as some teams start to stabilize their integrations, someone else will undoubtedly release something new.
Maybe we can address these issues by having a few of these monthly builds get promoted as 'Package Releases'.
This is a great time to be having this conversation. Thank-you Doug for starting it! The planning council is not meeting this month, but I'll summarize the issues and bring them forward in August (although there are several PC members who have already commented). In the mean-time, please keep this conversation going.
Cheers,
Ian