To ensure adequate time for release planning by the community, partners, and vendors, a specific release process will be followed for all releases.
A Release Candidate (RC) is designed to give the community time to adjust their existing environments for any breaking changes and identify any unintended changes. Strong community participation during the RC process will result in more stable releases.
Major releases will have an initial RC cycle with a minimum duration of three weeks between the date of the RC release and the date of the final release.
Minor releases will have an initial RC cycle with a minimum duration of two weeks between the date of the RC release and the date of the final release.
Patch releases will have an initial RC cycle with a minimum duration of one week from the RC release and final release.
If necessary, changes will be incorporated during an RC; if the changes resolve significant issues or introduce risk, an additional RC may be created at the discretion of the Approvers group. If a revised RC is necessary, the Production Release schedule will be impacted; the exact impact will vary on a case-by-case basis depending on the nature of the issue(s) identified during the RC review. However, it will be communicated as part of the updated RC release notes.
Production Releases will only be completed after a successful Release Candidate cycle, except in the case of a significant security release included as part of a Patch release.
The anticipated release date will be communicated to the community at the time of the RC. And each release will take the following considerations into mind for all releases.
- Releases must allow for at least two business days following the release (based on standard business operations of Monday - Friday). Thus, releases should only be made on Mondays, Tuesdays, or Wednesdays.
- Releases will not be completed during weeks of major US holidays, specifically New Years, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, or Christmas.
- Best efforts shall be made to avoid other significant holidays in other countries.
You can utilize the "Watch" functionality within GitHub to receive notifications for new Release Candidates and Production Releases using the "Releases Only" notification option.