CiviCRM Release Management
This project supports meta-activities for release-management, such as the index of release-plans and the release invitations.
Release Plans
| Name | Invitations | Review Week | Test Week | Release | Post Mortem | Planning Document |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| November-December Cycle (4.7.14) | Nov 5 - Nov 11 | Nov 11 - Nov 21 | Nov 22 - 6 Dec | 7 Dec, 2016 | Dec 14-15 | Google Doc |
| October-November Cycle (4.7.13) | Sep 19 - Oct 13 | Sep 19 - Oct 13 | Oct 14 - 29 | Nov 2, 2016 | Nov 9 - 10 | Google Doc |
| September-October Cycle (4.7.12) | Sep 8 - 18 | Sep 8 - 18 | Sep 20 - Oct 1 | Oct 5, 2016 | ||
| August-September Cycle (4.7.11) | -- | Aug 16 - 27 | Aug 29 - Sep 4 | Sep 7, 2016 | Google Doc, JIRA Board | |
| July-August Cycle (4.7.10) | Jul 5 - 10 | Jul 11 - 19 | Jul 20 - Jul 29 | Jul 3, 2016 | Google Doc, JIRA Board, Calendar | |
| June-July Cycle (4.7.9) | Jun 9 - 14 | Jun 14 - 25 | Jun 27 - Jul 3 | Jul 6, 2016 | Google Doc | |
| May-June Cycle (4.7.8) | May 5 - 10 | May 10 - 18 | May 21 - 29 | Jun 1, 2016 | Google Doc | |
| April-May Cycle (4.7.7) | Apr 5 - 8 | Apr 9 - 18 | Apr 22 - May 1 | May 4, 2016 | Google Doc |
- Invitations: The release-manager curates the list of pending PRs and invites developers to partner-up based on related topics (such as a "CiviMail" group or a "CiviContribute" group). All members of the core developer team will participate.
- Review Week: Participants review each other's PRs. This may involve some discussion, code-review, testing, merging, or closing PRs.
- Test Week: Participants install the release-candidate with realistic configurations (eg staging sites) and check that their major customizations still work. Emergency issues (regressions) may be fixed.
(Note: This is a new process and may change for future releases.)
Philosophy
Reviewing and testing are natural, important, on-going parts of software-development, but they generally cannot be done by the original developer. All developers have a shared interest in having their changes reviewed by a neutral and competent party. The goal of the release-cycle is to match-up developers who are willing to check each other's work, and to bring in feedback from non-developers to improve quality assurance.