Since branching Bolt v1 and commencing on the path to Bolt v2 we've spent time thinking about how, as a community based project, to best manage our release process.
Some of the points that we're trying to consider in this discussion are:
- Keep the project moving… don't stagnate
- Keep our processes in line with our vision of simplicity
- Keep the management of processes from interfering with the fun we have writing the code, documentation, and community interaction
- Learn from the success of other projects, as well as from their mistakes
- Release early, release often!
Release schedules follow the basic pattern of:
- 14 day feature window (hard limit)
- 14 day bug fix window (soft end-limit)
- 14 day contingency window (only if required)
- Release!
An example would be:
| Window | Open (09:00 UTC) | Close (midnight UTC) |
|---|---|---|
| Feature | 09 March 2015 | 22 March 2015 |
| Bug Fix | 23 March 2015 | 05 April 2015 |
| Release | 06 April 2015 | n/a |