I am personally a strong advocate of Approach #2. I believe "release early release often" is the right model for open source projects. There are numerous examples of where this is successfully adopted and community benefiting from. If the overheads of a releases are reduced and managed well, this ought to be a non-issue. While there are projects that do releases one or even twice in a month, we can certainly do with a 6-8 week release cycle.
>> The disadvantage is that there could be incomplete features going into Falcon, leading to customers trying out and struggling with these features. This is only an issue if the feature is prematurely advertised as being available, as long as new features don't break existing functionality. Luckily we have a reasonable test suite. Regards Srikanth Sundarrajan > Subject: [DISCUSS] : Apache Falcon minor release schedule > From: [email protected] > To: [email protected] > Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2016 18:39:11 +0000 > > Hello Team, > > We had a discussion on the scope and schedule of Apache Falcon minor releases > during the Falcon bi-weekly meeting. There were two approaches suggested. I > request you to provide your feedback/opinion on what is the preferred way. > > Approach 1 : Minor release should be feature based. > In this approach, the release manager will coordinate with the Falcon > community and come up with an short wish-list of features that should go into > next release. The list should be achievable in the timelines proposed. Once > the list is decided upon, the release will happen only after the features are > complete (including full testing). The advantage is that minor releases will > be feature complete and stable. Community will spend less time on debugging > incomplete features. The disadvantage is that the release timeline becomes > unpredictable due to unforeseen feature delays. > > Approach 2 : Minor release should be time bound. > In this approach, minor releases will be done on a regular time interval > proposed to be once a month. Every month, if we have a single complete > feature committed to Falcon, a new branch will be cut and a minor release > will be made. Incomplete features can go into the release, but they will not > be advertised. The advantage is that falcon will have faster and predictable > release cycles. The disadvantage is that there could be incomplete features > going into Falcon, leading to customers trying out and struggling with these > features. > > Thank you > Balu Vellanki
