Re: RFC: change to 6 months release cycle

[Ian Campbell <ian.campbell@citrix.com>]

On Fri, 2015-10-02 at 18:43 +0100, Wei Liu wrote:

> # Proposed release cycle
> 
> Aim for 6 months release cycle -- 4 months development period, 2
> months hardening period. Make two releases per year.
> 
> Fixed hard cut-off date, no more freeze exception. Arrange RCs
> immediately after cut-off.

+1

> Take into account holiday seasons in US, Europe and China, the two
> cut-off dates are the Fridays in which that last day of March and
> September are in.

I can't actually parse(*) this but +1 to the concept of having a well
established rule based on absolute times rather than relative to some
previous event.

> Targeted release date is two months after cut-off date. Still, we pick
> a Friday using the same rule. We can also release a bit earlier if
> everything goes well. If we somehow fail to release on time, we eat
> into next development cycle. The next cut-off date will still be
> fixed.

+1, I think this is a very important difference to the current scheme,
where slippage pushes out the next release, leading to uncertainty in
general and annoying things like slowly shifting the release schedule into
clashing with all sorts of things (Xmas, Chinese New Year, etc).

Ian.

(*) I think there may be a missing "of the week", i.e. "the Fridays of the
week in which the last day of March and September falls"? Anyway, I don't
actually care what the rule is, just that it exists ;-)