RFC: Proposed changes to GA release process about vitess HOT 5 OPEN

This proposal sounds good to me, however I have concerns about the 2-weeks period before the RC-1 release. If we want to be able to do bug fixes, I think we might as well release an RC-1 early (at the beginning of the 2 weeks period) and leave enough time for everyone in the community to test the RC-1. Because unless people are running their systems on Vitess' main, we won't get many bug reports from the community.

That would also allow us to not block development on main.

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Thanks for this @deepthi, you perfectly summarise the "issue" and your proposal match what I was thinking.

Bugs can be introduced into the release branch after an RC which are not caught until GA

it's the main issue IMO

If we fix a bug, we publish another release candidate

exactly 👍

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The latest release candidate commit is used to make the GA release.

Just to be clear here, the exact same commit cannot be used as we have to push more commits during the release process of the GA. However, the release PR of GA will be based on a RC commit.

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Once RC1 is published, we accept bug reports against that and evaluate whether they should be fixed. If we fix a bug, we publish another release candidate.

Would we do this immediately after every bug fix, or should we accumulate bug fixes for some time before doing the next RC?

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Would we do this immediately after every bug fix, or should we accumulate bug fixes for some time before doing the next RC?

I agree with @systay. But, doing a RC takes some time and some planning, it will be time consuming for the release team to do a new RC after each bug fix or even every other day. I think we need some sort of cadance/schedule, just an example: one or two RC per week (if needed: when there are new bug fixes). That way the release team knows what to expect during the period between the first RC and the GA release, and a day before every scheduled RC they can evaluate if a new RC is really needed.

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