[DISCUSS] SystemDS 2.2 Release / Upgrades

[Matthias Boehm]

Hi all,

the original plan was to release SystemDS 2.1 as the last release for 
JDK 8 and Spark 2.x. However, our main branch accumulated quite a number 
of critical fixes and performance improvements. Accordingly, I'd like to 
propose releasing SystemDS 2.2 again for JDK 8 and Spark 2.4 in the next 
weeks and then immediately switch to JDK 11 and then release SystemDS 
2.3. Any comments or opinions?

I would volunteer as release manager (never done it before) so we spread 
the knowledge how to run the release process a bit. Of course, I would 
appreciate help from previous release managers and people who 
contributed to the automation of the release.

Finally, we recently revived the performance test suite so we can run a 
battery of algorithm-level tests at different scales before the release. 
I would make a case for running this for local/GPU, Spark, and federated 
with scales that allow to complete it in ~1-2 weeks.

Regards,
Matthias