To ensure adequate time for release planning by the community, partners, and vendors a specific release process will be followed for all releases.
For a period of two-weeks (Minor & Revision) or four-weeks (Major) before any release, a Release Candidate (RC) version will be made available to the public. At present these release candidates will be for testing only. After version 10.x efforts will be made to support upgrading from RC to Production releases.
The goal of these release candidates is to give the community time to adjust their existing environments for any breaking changes, as well as to identify any issues with the changes. If necessary, changes will be incorporated an additional RC release could be made if significant problems are identified. If a revised Release Candidate is necessary the Production Release schedule will be impacted. The exact impact will vary on a case-by-case basis depending on the nature of the issue(s) identified during RC review, however, will be clearly communicated during the release.
Production releases will only be completed after a successful RC phase, except in the case of a significant security release that was included as part of a revision release.
The release date will be communicated to the community at the time of the RC. And each release will take the following considerations into mind for all releases.
- Releases must allow for at least two additional business days after the release for regular Monday - Friday office situations (Releases only on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday)
- Releases will not be completed during weeks of major US holidays, specifically New Years, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, or Christmas.
- Best efforts shall be made to avoid other significant holidays in other countries.