[Policy] Release Schedule

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Pentarctagon
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[Policy] Release Schedule

Post by Pentarctagon »

Regular stable point releases:
  • Releases would be done as needed as determined by the PM, rather than on a strict schedule, other than at minimum requiring a point release every three months. This will ensure that in the case of development of the stable branch decreasing that minor bugfixes will still eventually be released to players.
  • There will still be a string freeze two weeks prior to any new stable branch point release.
  • All commits with string changes must be submitted as a PR and approved by the UI, SP content, or MP content maintainer as appropriate. The purpose of this is to double check for correctness in order to reduce the need for minor typo fixes and corrections later, which then also increases rework for translators.
  • More specifically, the rules for string changes are as follows:
    • For text containing full sentences, changing or adding strings is allowed when the text is plain wrong in a way that would cause issues for players relying on the text for something else (ie: if the objectives say to kill a named enemy unit that no longer exists in the scenario). This means there will be no minor fixes for punctuation, grammar, etc.
    • For shorter text, changing or adding new strings is allowed, but only when it's required to fix a bug that affects the game's playability (ie: if a new preference or button is needed somewhere).
    • In all cases, removing strings is allowed.
Regular development point releases:
  • Development point releases will be done at 00:00 UTC on the third Sunday of every month.
  • Development point releases have no string freeze or bi-weekly pot update. As such, it is not recommend for translation work to begin on the development branch during these releases unless:
    • A particular area (such as a campaign) has been placed under an early string freeze.
    • The translation team is willing to accept that there may be rework needed.
Development beta releases:
  • Development beta releases will be done at 00:00 UTC on the third Sunday of every month.
  • The start of beta will be determined by the project roadmap.
  • The development branch string freeze begins.
  • The development branch feature freeze begins - no major overhauls/refactors/etc of any area of the game should take place at this point either.
Development release candidate releases:
  • RC1 comes after the third beta.
  • Further RC releases will be done as needed.
New stable release:
  • Released one month after RC1, assuming there are no remaining blocker issues.
Emergency releases:
  • Hopefully rare, and done as needed to address security and-or game breaking bugs.
  • Emergency releases do not replace the regular point release dates, especially for the stable branch which needs a string freeze and translations update for stable point releases.
The previous discussion around this topic can be found here.
99 little bugs in the code, 99 little bugs
take one down, patch it around
-2,147,483,648 little bugs in the code
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