On Sat, Oct 11, 2025 at 4:48 AM Josh McKenzie <[email protected]> wrote:
> I'll take a crack at those questions Dinesh: > > 1. What branch would be designated as a backports branch? > > A new branch ( cassandra-5.1 ) should be created. While reusing > cassandra-5.0 reduces overhead, changing the identity of a GA release > mid-lifecycle risks breaking user trust (Isaac's point holds as > foundational to me). We have no way of knowing how many operators rely on > 5.0’s stability contract. > I have a personal preference for cassandra-5.0-backports instead of cassandra-5.1. The naming is clear, unambiguous and communicates the _intent_ without having to look up documentation. 3. What would releases look like including release cadence? > > "5.1.0-beta", "5.1.0-backport", "5.1.0-community"; some flag to denote > "not regular GA". > Cadence: No fixed schedule (same as current GA). Reactive to feature > merge or volume of smaller improvements, critical bugfixes, etc. > My preference is to have `cassandra-5.0-stable` and `cassandra-5.0-backports` artifact names. > 4. What would be the success criteria of this pilot? > > - Increased community engagement (features backported in, releases cut); > draw down of private forks > - More contributors stepping up as release managers to maintain this branch > - Multiple non-trivial production deployments using backport branch > - Acceptable stability and trust in the backport branch releases > +1 > 5. What is the proposed time duration of the pilot? > > 12 months, with quarterly [DISCUSS] retro check-ins on dev@. > +1
