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Posted to dev@nifi.apache.org by "Peter Wicks (pwicks)" <pw...@micron.com> on 2019/11/05 20:06:19 UTC

RE: [EXT] Re: [DISCUSS] Time based release cycles

I feel like most users ask, "When is version x coming out" because they don't want to/or can't do a build themselves and they really want to use new features.

I know it's a completely different direction from where I think your question was pointing Pierre, but I wonder how many users would be OK with a nightly build binary? Many other Apache projects provide nightly builds including JMeter, Ignite, ANT, Cordova, Solr and OpenOffice.  This would also make it easier for users to provide feedback sooner on changes, as they could just grab a pre-built binary.

Thanks,
  Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: Russell Bateman <ru...@windofkeltia.com> 
Sent: Tuesday, November 5, 2019 8:39 AM
To: dev@nifi.apache.org
Subject: [EXT] Re: [DISCUSS] Time based release cycles

Kafka is first-rate, rock-star technology, just as is NiFi.

It would be nice to find something from Kafka elaborating on how this regular and accelerated release cadence is working out for them, how much more work it's been, what problems they've experienced, etc.

I show their releases over the last couple of years as below[1]. The cadence appears to be settling into the the 4-month cycle proposed. It's possible to discern a maintenance schedule. It doesn't exactly match NiFi's 0.x and 1.x efforts (which were simultaneous for some time too), but it's clear they've faced similar complexity (maybe a little more though for a shorter time). And, of course, there's no meaningful way to compare the effort going into and features implemented in Kafka by comparison with NiFi.

2019
2.3.1    24 October
2.3.0    25 June
2.2.1     1 June
2.2.0    22 March
2.1.1    15 February

2018
2.1.0    20 November
2.0.1     9 November
2.0.0    30 July
1.1.1    19 July
1.0.2     8 July
0.11.0.3  2 July
0.10.2.2  2 July
1.1.0    28 March
1.0.1     5 March

2017
1.0.0     1 November
0.11.0.1 13 September
0.11.0.0 28 June
.
.
.

[1] https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fkafka.apache.org%2Fdownloads&amp;data=02%7C01%7Cpwicks%40micron.com%7C5025edaf0fcc4cd23ecb08d762064cb5%7Cf38a5ecd28134862b11bac1d563c806f%7C0%7C1%7C637085651507559851&amp;sdata=ax5RXiprNm8Ls1k%2FuEE4SwA5tCXzObJu3Dk%2FiP3h3dI%3D&amp;reserved=0

On 11/5/19 8:02 AM, Pierre Villard wrote:
> Hi NiFi dev community,
>
> We just released NiFi 1.10 and that's an amazing release with a LOT of 
> great new features. Congrats to everyone!
>
> I wanted to take this opportunity to bring a discussion around how 
> often we're doing releases.
>
> We released 1.10.0 yesterday and we released 1.9.0 in February, that's 
> around 8 months between the two releases. And if we take 1.9.2, 
> released early April, that's about 7 months.
>
> I acknowledge that doing releases is really up to the committers and 
> anyone can take the lead to perform this process, however, we often 
> have people asking (on the mailing lists or somewhere else) about when 
> will the next release be. I'm wondering if it would make sense to 
> think about something a bit more "planned" by doing time based releases.
>
> The Apache Kafka community wrote a nice summary of the pros/cons about 
> such an approach [1] and it definitely adds more work to the 
> committers with more frequent releases. I do, however, think that it'd 
> ease the adoption of NiFi, its deployment and the dynamism in PR/code review.
>
> I'm just throwing the idea here and I'm genuinely curious about what 
> you think about this approach.
>
> [1]
> https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcwik
> i.apache.org%2Fconfluence%2Fdisplay%2FKAFKA%2FTime%2BBased%2BRelease%2
> BPlan&amp;data=02%7C01%7Cpwicks%40micron.com%7C5025edaf0fcc4cd23ecb08d
> 762064cb5%7Cf38a5ecd28134862b11bac1d563c806f%7C0%7C1%7C637085651507559
> 851&amp;sdata=Nj1t2mTP7VWwOIxD5V5vlnH8quyXYP8ul6Sa2e3nswE%3D&amp;reser
> ved=0
>
> Thanks,
> Pierre
>


Re: [EXT] Re: [DISCUSS] Time based release cycles

Posted by Aldrin Piri <al...@gmail.com>.
It is worth a reminder in context of this thread that the definition of a
release is well defined by the ASF [1].

Nightly builds and their ilk are explicitly intended for "the developer
community for testing purposes."  Users as folks that are contributors
testing features are the target audience.  The generalized user as a
consumer of the software would violate the linked guidance.

Other projects certainly provide these but are also quite clear on the
scope of those artifacts.  OpenOffice, as you provided, is an example of
this [2].  Not opposed to the idea as it could help with some of our build
issues, but I do not believe it alleviates the crux of what Pierre is
trying to address.

[1] https://www.apache.org/legal/release-policy.html#what
[2] https://www.openoffice.org/download/devbuilds.html

On Tue, Nov 5, 2019 at 3:06 PM Peter Wicks (pwicks) <pw...@micron.com>
wrote:

> I feel like most users ask, "When is version x coming out" because they
> don't want to/or can't do a build themselves and they really want to use
> new features.
>
> I know it's a completely different direction from where I think your
> question was pointing Pierre, but I wonder how many users would be OK with
> a nightly build binary? Many other Apache projects provide nightly builds
> including JMeter, Ignite, ANT, Cordova, Solr and OpenOffice.  This would
> also make it easier for users to provide feedback sooner on changes, as
> they could just grab a pre-built binary.
>
> Thanks,
>   Peter
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Russell Bateman <ru...@windofkeltia.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, November 5, 2019 8:39 AM
> To: dev@nifi.apache.org
> Subject: [EXT] Re: [DISCUSS] Time based release cycles
>
> Kafka is first-rate, rock-star technology, just as is NiFi.
>
> It would be nice to find something from Kafka elaborating on how this
> regular and accelerated release cadence is working out for them, how much
> more work it's been, what problems they've experienced, etc.
>
> I show their releases over the last couple of years as below[1]. The
> cadence appears to be settling into the the 4-month cycle proposed. It's
> possible to discern a maintenance schedule. It doesn't exactly match NiFi's
> 0.x and 1.x efforts (which were simultaneous for some time too), but it's
> clear they've faced similar complexity (maybe a little more though for a
> shorter time). And, of course, there's no meaningful way to compare the
> effort going into and features implemented in Kafka by comparison with NiFi.
>
> 2019
> 2.3.1    24 October
> 2.3.0    25 June
> 2.2.1     1 June
> 2.2.0    22 March
> 2.1.1    15 February
>
> 2018
> 2.1.0    20 November
> 2.0.1     9 November
> 2.0.0    30 July
> 1.1.1    19 July
> 1.0.2     8 July
> 0.11.0.3  2 July
> 0.10.2.2  2 July
> 1.1.0    28 March
> 1.0.1     5 March
>
> 2017
> 1.0.0     1 November
> 0.11.0.1 13 September
> 0.11.0.0 28 June
> .
> .
> .
>
> [1]
> https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fkafka.apache.org%2Fdownloads&amp;data=02%7C01%7Cpwicks%40micron.com%7C5025edaf0fcc4cd23ecb08d762064cb5%7Cf38a5ecd28134862b11bac1d563c806f%7C0%7C1%7C637085651507559851&amp;sdata=ax5RXiprNm8Ls1k%2FuEE4SwA5tCXzObJu3Dk%2FiP3h3dI%3D&amp;reserved=0
>
> On 11/5/19 8:02 AM, Pierre Villard wrote:
> > Hi NiFi dev community,
> >
> > We just released NiFi 1.10 and that's an amazing release with a LOT of
> > great new features. Congrats to everyone!
> >
> > I wanted to take this opportunity to bring a discussion around how
> > often we're doing releases.
> >
> > We released 1.10.0 yesterday and we released 1.9.0 in February, that's
> > around 8 months between the two releases. And if we take 1.9.2,
> > released early April, that's about 7 months.
> >
> > I acknowledge that doing releases is really up to the committers and
> > anyone can take the lead to perform this process, however, we often
> > have people asking (on the mailing lists or somewhere else) about when
> > will the next release be. I'm wondering if it would make sense to
> > think about something a bit more "planned" by doing time based releases.
> >
> > The Apache Kafka community wrote a nice summary of the pros/cons about
> > such an approach [1] and it definitely adds more work to the
> > committers with more frequent releases. I do, however, think that it'd
> > ease the adoption of NiFi, its deployment and the dynamism in PR/code
> review.
> >
> > I'm just throwing the idea here and I'm genuinely curious about what
> > you think about this approach.
> >
> > [1]
> > https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcwik
> > i.apache.org%2Fconfluence%2Fdisplay%2FKAFKA%2FTime%2BBased%2BRelease%2
> > BPlan&amp;data=02%7C01%7Cpwicks%40micron.com%7C5025edaf0fcc4cd23ecb08d
> > 762064cb5%7Cf38a5ecd28134862b11bac1d563c806f%7C0%7C1%7C637085651507559
> > 851&amp;sdata=Nj1t2mTP7VWwOIxD5V5vlnH8quyXYP8ul6Sa2e3nswE%3D&amp;reser
> > ved=0
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Pierre
> >
>
>