Pulp

# Future Releases

Following the 2.11 release, Pulp development will have transitioned almost entirely to working on the upcoming Pulp 3 release. Any releases after Pulp 2.11 will be scheduled as-needed.

A 2.12 release is expected but a date has not yet been set for this release.

# Release Stages

**Beta** - Dev believes the release is complete and ready for testing. Any bug fixes related to this release are still acceptable.  

**Release Candidate** (RC) - Only bug fixes related to regressions, upgrade failures, or similar severity are accepted at this point.  

**Generally Available** (GA) - Release is generally available in the stable repositories.

## Release Stage Conditions

Releases spend a minimum time of one week in a given release stage. Subsequent releases in a given stage do not "reset the clock" on this waiting period. Care is taken to verify release-breaking bugs prior to advancing to the next release stage, which usually adds a few days to the release cycle, preventing "rapid-fire" releases.

### Z Release Beta

There are no release candidates for Z releases. Z releases advance directly to GA after testing reveals no new blocking issues, and have passed acceptance testing by QE (including upgrade testing).

### Y Release Beta

Y releases advance to RC after testing reveals no new blocking issues, and have passed acceptance testing by QE (not including upgrade testing).

### Y Release RC

This release stage cannot advance to GA until the upgrade path from previous versions of pulp is confirmed to be working.

# Y Release Cadence

Due to the unpredictable timeline of the release schedule once a Beta is released, the Y release cycle begins on the day of the previous **Beta** Y release. While unpredictable, the 12-week period between beta releases should be more than adequate to get that release Generally Available and still allow a few weeks before the next Beta is announced.

  - week 0: (Y-1 Release) Previous Y release cycle begins with a Beta Release

  - week 12: (Y Release) Y release cycle begins with a Beta Release

      - dev branch created for this Y Release, preventing the addition of new features.

      - build system adapted to build from dev branch

      - master branch now tracks development for next Y release

      - beta is built from dev branch

  - week 12+1?: Y release advances through Beta stage to RC as stage conditions are met. Release schedule is no longer time-based.

  - week 12+2?: Y release advances through RC phase to GA as stage conditions are met.

This release cadence was introduced to coincide with the release of the 2.11.0 Beta on 2016/10/25. If desired, the previous Y release cadence can be seen in the history of this wiki document.

# Z Release Cadence

The Z release cycle consists of alternating weekly beta and GA releases of bug & security fixes for Generally Available Y releases, built from a dev branch.

  - week 0: (Z-1) Previous Z GA Release

  - week 1: Beta Z Release

  - week 2: GA Z Release

Z releases are released as often as possible based on this schedule, but are subject to upgrade testing which often extends the beta period beyond a week.

# Version Numbering

To the best of our ability, our releases adhere to semantic versioning. The releases in this document correspond to releases that increment a given release component (Y or Z) as defined by semantic versioning:

http://semver.org/#spec-item-2

In short, a "Z Release" increments the "Z" release component (e.g. 1.0.0 -\> 1.0.1), and indicates no new features; only bug and security fixes have taken place. A "Y Release" increments the "Y" release component (e.g. 1.0.0 -\> 1.1.0), and indicates that new features have been introduced, but backward-incompatible API changes have not taken place.

"X" Releases are not covered by this document. At the moment, they are rare enough as to be handled case-by-case. The next X release, Pulp 3, is currently being actively discussed on the pulp-dev mailing list. If you're interested in participating, go here to subscribe:

https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/pulp-dev