In my various conversations over the past two months, the release process we are using has come up many times. As we're doing QA for 2.5 and getting ready for the December conference I'd like to get a conversation started about whether we should change our practices.
I have a couple of observations and a proposal.
Observations:
- The .0 release often has too many issues and/or missing features to be a good choice for running in production. Many schools are therefore running .x and it would be nice to provide a maintenance release for those institutions who weren't able/willing to essentially build their own maintenance release.
- With the current policy of supporting only one previous release, this essentially means you will be "forced" to upgrade every academic year if you want to be on a supported release.
- The Sakai feature set has advanced to the point where there aren't large missing pieces that need feeling "immediately". We can therefore think about slowing down.
- QA is stretched by the current release schedule.
- Given the nature of the academic calendar, a consistent release schedule is sensible (as opposed to setting the release date based on the features we want to see added).
Proposal:
I would propose that we: (a) slow down the release schedule and (b) create a separate "kernel" release and an "enterprise" release and (c) have a formal maintenance release. I will defer to Aaron's definition of a Kernel Release (please comment on this as well).
Here's the more detailed proposal:
- A "kernel" release at T(0).
There should also be a developer release with this or, perhaps, they are the same thing. A developer release is what you need to develop a standalone tool in Sakai. - A Sakai release at T(3) (months).
This would include core/provisional tools and any contrib that were ready for distribution at
that time and is, in some ways, a beta release. If a tool was not ready at the time it could be made available separately (or part of the maintenance release) - A Sakai maintenance release at T(5)
Again, bundled with tool bug fixes and any tools that might have missed the T(3) deadline
If we start at Jan 15 then the beta release is April 15 and the maintenance release is June 15. We only do this once per year.