Release early, Release often

[Clement Wong]

Hi Andrew,

If this is the case, I hope you guys will consider to have LTS releases as well.
This would also mean that Karolin won’t need to deal with 10 versions, but instead
only 1 or 2 LTS versions and 1 or 2 normal versions.

BR,
Clement

> On Apr 25, 2015, at 5:06 PM, Andrew Bartlett <abartlet at samba.org> wrote:
> 
> (I started this discussion somewhere else, but it belongs on samba-technical, 
> so I'm starting it again here)
> 
> Since the long-delayed release of Samba 4.2, I have been thinking about 
> our release process, and I would like to suggest a 4-6 month release cycle.
> 
> We agreed back in 2010 (just after 3.5) to move to 9 month release
> cycles. However, I think that '9' month release cycles are hurt us more
> than they have helped.  Since 2010 our last release cycles have lasted
> 17, 16, 10 and 15 months!
> 
> Moving to a 4-6 month release cycle means that we would stop holding up
> releases for features that 'can't wait for the next release', because it
> will be along soon enough.  
> 
> I'm mindful of the load on Karolin, but it should be less stress because
> we certainly won't be waiting for features that are not already finished
> in master, and the shorter RC releases should only be addressing actual
> regressions, not backported features that really belong in the next
> release.
> 
> For Samba 4.2 in particular, this release not only started quite late -
> we cut rc1 a full year after 4.1, but we kept on waiting and waiting for
> a feature (leases) that wasn't in master at the time we wanted to
> freeze, and we kept chasing that almost right to the end.
> 
> The position I have is that, now that we are past the disruptive time of
> the 4.0 merge, we just shouldn't be waiting for features.  We should
> instead have a much more 'linux-kernel' release schedule, making new,
> production releases on a time-frame measured in months, not years.  
> 
> We need a much higher release velocity to give our users and customers
> confidence that even if a feature is on the Roadmap as under active 
> development, or that if a feature is in master, that it will soon be 
> in a release.  
> 
> We have managed 6 month releases in the past, between 3.2, 3.3 and 3.4.
> It was only after taking 9 months to do 3.5, and that decision at
> SambaXP 2010, that the timeframes started to really extend.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Andrew Bartlett
> 
> -- 
> Andrew Bartlett                       http://samba.org/~abartlet/
> Authentication Developer, Samba Team  http://samba.org
> Samba Developer, Catalyst IT          http://catalyst.net.nz/services/samba
> 
>