[rabbitmq-discuss] Release Process

[Ben Hood]

Hi all,

The Rabbit development team has a question which the community may be
able to help us with.

ATM we are going through the process of finishing off the last
remaining items for the next release.

After this release has been made we would like to continue the process
of separating the client releases from broker releases.

The reason why we want to do this is to make the release procedure
less monolithic and we don't want to have upgrade clients in a lock
step fashion.

This will (hopefully) increase the agility of the overall release
process and thereby increase the frequency of releasing new
functionality and bug fixes.

What we don't know is if we release clients at different intervals to
the broker, how is the average user going to know what version works
with what.


The Current Rabbit Ecosphere
--------------------------------------------

- Broker 1.4.x
- Java Client 1.4.x
- .NET Client 1.4.x


Where We May End Up
-----------------------------------

- Broker 1.x.y
- Java Client 2.m.n
- .NET Client 3.j.k
- (Erlang Client x.y) ?
- (Adapter p.q) ?


The problem with letting all of the different versions run free is
that knowing what works with what becomes less apparent to casual
observer.

So for example, how is the average person who doesn't know Rabbit from
a bar of soap supposed to work out that version 2.1.3 of the Java
client has been tested and verified against version 1.7.8 of the
broker?

Another way to view this would be a compatibility matrix, which would
give a slightly different perspective because it would be an overview
of every release, rather than just a slice through certain versions.

One initial thought is to make periodic group releases. These would be
bundles of the components that are known to work with each other. This
would be similar to say a Ubuntu release (e.g. version 8.10 contains
gcc 4.3.2, awk 3.1.6, grep 2.5.3 etc).

In this scenario, we would do a seasonal umbrella release with a
particular name or version. It could as simple as a web page that
contains links the particular versions of the consituent parts.

So if anybody has any thoughts about this or the release process in
general please let us know. It could as simple as telling us what
naming scheme for the umbrella would be the most appropriate, e.g.

- Ubuntu Style: Year-Month
- Erlang Style: 12B-4
- Use code names like Roger, Warren, Bugs, Eminem, ....., (your favourite name)
- ?

Any comments or suggestions are welcome.

Ben