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Release Cadence

As of the 1.6 release, the Spinnaker team is committed to providing a more regular release cadence in order to help users understand when new features will be available, as well help non-core developers plan to get their features released in the next stable version of Spinnaker.

Release Window

Every eight weeks we open the Release Window, meaning that we cut release branches for the upcoming release. If the version we intend to release is M.N, a branch with the name release-M.N.x is cut in each component repository. For example, see the state of the Clouddriver repository leading up to the 1.6 release:

We call this snapshot of all the Spinnaker repositories the “Release Candidate”.

Running the Release Candidate

If you’re brave enough to run the Release Candidate, please file bugs or alert us on slack if you find any problems!

Once these release branches are cut, anyone can run the release candidate using version release-M.N.x-latest-unvalidated:

# this would be version 'release-1.6.x-latest-unvalidated' for 1.6
hal config version edit --version release-M.N.x-latest-unvalidated

hal deploy apply

Patching the Release Candidate

:warning: WARNING

Do not merge feature code into a release branch, only fixes are accepted.

If you’ve found a fix for a bug in the Release Candidate, follow the patching procedure described here. If your patch is merged before the Release Window is closed, it will be included in this release.

Unless a severe error (e.g. security vulnerability, large-scale breakage) has a pending patch, patch releases are published at a weekly cadence on a best-effort basis.

Closing the Release Window

Once the community has deemed that the Candidate is “stable” (meaning all integration tests are passing, and no known issues or regressions remain), we will release Spinnaker at version M.N.0. Further patches can be merged into the release branch for future patch releases (e.g. M.N.1).

Upcoming Release Windows

Version Window Opens
1.15.0 2019-07-08
1.16.0 2019-09-02
1.17.0 2019-10-28
1.18.0 2020-01-06

Keep in mind, when the window opens, the release candidate becomes available. The actual release happens one to two weeks later.