Announcing Our Official Code Freeze Schedule & Process

Events
,
1

Hey everyone,

To improve the stability and predictability of our releases, we are formalizing our code freeze process, for cloud content. This will help everyone plan their contributions and ensure we have a stable window for final testing.

Here is a summary of the process and deadlines.

For Minor and Patch Releases

  • When: The freeze begins at 5:00 PM EST on the last Tuesday of each month.
  • What it means: We will stop merging backport Pull Requests from the main branch into the stable branch .
  • What continues: Development on the main branch is not affected and continues as usual. Any changes merged to main after the deadline will be slated for the next release cycle.
  • Exceptions: Critical, release-blocking bug fixes may be approved for backporting by a maintainer.

For Major Releases

  • When: The freeze begins at 5:00 PM EST on the second to last Tuesday of the month prior to the release month.
  • What it means: A new major version branch is created from the main branch.
  • What continues: Development on the main branch can resume immediately after the new stable branch is created.
  • What happens next: The new stable branch is “frozen” from new features and breaking changes. Only critical bug fixes and testing-related changes will be merged into it leading up to the release.

Please note that for the time being, these freezes will be enforced manually . We are working to implement automation to handle this in the near future. Until then, we appreciate your cooperation in adhering to these deadlines.
We believe this process will help us deliver more reliable releases. Please let us know if you have any questions below.

For more information: Release cycles for cloud content

Thanks,
Cloud Content Team

1 Like
2

Thanks for sharing this.
Could you clarify which exact repos & collections this applies to?

1 Like
3

This applies to the cloud collections mentioned here.

1 Like
4

I suspect I’m one of a handful of maintainers outside of your team that might need to be a little careful with this new policy (although I know I’ve been much less active recently). It would be really helpful to have a calendar around with the freezes documented, especially which months a Major release is expected.

5

@tremble, a calendar is a great idea.

@gundalow, can we use the events calendar for our team’s purposes,? If not, could we create a team-specific one in the forum, or do you have a better suggestion?

6

@tremble Great idea.
I’ve (ab)used this forum post

  1. Moved from “getting help” to Events
  2. Edited the top post to add in the markdown for “Cloud Content Freeze Minor and Patch Releases”
  3. Confirmed if you go to Events Calendar we can see the Minor & Patch release freeze on 26th August (and 23rd September)
  4. If that looks right, edit the top post and copy the markdown event block to add in the Major release

Going forward, we should see if we want a sub-category under Events (currently we only have CFP) to use for Release Schedule, that’s something the @release-managers have talked about