Is version 7 production ready?

[ar-kristina]

When looking at the releases version 7 looks more like a playground instead of a well tested production ready package.

New minor releases: time by time and not based on any (public available) release schedule
Patch releases: quite often within hours after a minor release (why isn't the minor release tested well enough to avoid these patches)
In general: why was there no extended testing period (kind of beta-tests) after the big linq-rewrite for version 7?

So is version 7 of Marten a kind of beta-test for an upcoming version 8?

I, and my teammates at work, can't understand that release-cycle and this is actually a show-stopper for Critter Stack Pro.
Please shed some light on the quite often releases and especially why patches need to follow immediately.

For work we'd expect some well tested releases that are ideally based on some rough schedule

[tomap]

Hello,
I have note experienced any instabilities in Marten in the latest releases, but I see a lot of v 7.x.0 followed closely by v7.x.1
Maybe changing the release to first publish a pre release version v7.x.0 pre1 followed after a day or two by v7.x.0
It might absorb the little instabilities.
Although it is possible that less people will have a look at those releases.

It would allow you (@jeremydmiller ) to deliver features to customer while not impacting too soon other users

What do you think?

[Hawxy]

For the last few months, Marten has been on a weekly-to-fortnightly release schedule. Typically, a release is made for one of a couple reasons:

• The work is required to support a JasperFX commercial engagement and thus gets priority.
• The work is required for functionality in Wolverine.
• The work is part of a major batch of work (ie the performance improvements in v7.25).
• The work has been sitting in the main branch for 2+ weeks and it should just be released to avoid people waiting on fixes to be annoyed.

why was there no extended testing period (kind of beta-tests) after the big linq-rewrite for version 7?

There was, a number of beta & RC releases were published that helped in ironing out a laundry list of LINQ problems before launch.

why isn't the minor release tested well enough to avoid these patches

Because despite having 7500+ tests, the permutations used in production systems are almost infinite and someone somewhere can run into an issue that was caused by a usage we didn't predict. The complexity of the changes that have been made over the v7 lifetime are more significant than v6, unfortunately increasing the risk for unknown problems to show up, thus requiring more patch releases. I do agree with @tomap that we should be releasing beta packages for particularly risky changes.

[mysticmind]

In fact, we do a release after seeing the 7500+ unit tests are all fine. But still we end up with some new issue raised for some permutations. Especially for completely new features, we definitely need to stick to a beta release rollout to minimize the risk of impacting production systems.

[tomap]

I do understand the requirements from paid customer, but those could be delivered in beta branches for a small period. The release cycle could include by default a pre release, even if in the majority of cases it would only last few hours. But at least, it's there by default, and in case of doubt, you make it last a bit longer