[rfc] six-month stable release cycles

[John Arbash Meinel]

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>> You've presented a clear case for:
>>
>> 1. moving to a 6 monthly cycle as our *primary* one
>> 2. having a stable branch with important bug fixes
>>
>> Given those changes, what is the driver behind continuing to do monthly
>> releases? Who is the audience for those exactly?


Arguably packaging is a primary factor here.

In my opinion we can also do something which brings in most of what you
want. Namely:

1) Plan to release a beta every 4weeks, without an RC period.
2) If a given beta has obvious issues, plan to release the next beta in
1 week, rather than 4 weeks. (Similar to how we would go from RC1 +
minor fixes => final.)

This avoids always generating 2 releases, but gives the same stability
guarantees that we have today.


I don't think nightlies give anything like the same experience of
monthlies. Even if a person only upgraded once a month, there is a lot
of unknowns in saying "I'm at bzr.dev 4452" rather than "1.17rc1". If
only to make sure you get more than 1 person testing a given "release".
If you stick with dailies, then everyone running will be at a slightly
different version.

John
=:->

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