Releasing procedure

DISCOS uses a major.minor.patch nomenclature, so Nuraghe-1.5.2 has a major version of 1, a minor version of 5, and a patch version of 2. The major version zero (0.y.z) is for initial development, when anything may change at any time, so the public API, the operator input commands and the schedule grammar should not be considered stable.

Production-ready releases

This section describes the semantic used to assign the version number to the production-ready releases, that is the releases the astronomers use during their normal observations.

New major versions

New major versions are exceptional, because they only come when strongly incompatible changes are deemed necessary, and are planned very long in advance.

That means if an astronomer schedule can be executed using DISCOS-1.x.y, then it will also be executed using any of the next releases of DISCOS with major version of 1.

New minor versions

New minor versions are feature releases, so they add functionality in a backwards-compatible manner.

New patch versions

New patch versions are bugfix releases that make backwards-compatible bug fixes

In-development versions

We also have non-production ready versions which get an additional qualifier: beta and release candidate (RC). The beta versions are aimed at testing by advanced users, not production use, while the RC is aimed at testing by a group of astronomers, as described in section Release Candidate.

Beta

In this stage no more features are accepted. Only bug fixes can now be committed. This is when core developers should concentrate on the task of fixing regressions and other new issues. The new user’s manual must be released before the end of this stage.

Release Candidate

A release candidate (RC) must be tested by a group of astronomers, called RC testers. They should interact whit the core developers in order to report the malfunctions.

This release can only have bugfixes applied that have been reviewed by other core developers, and can become a final-release only after the RC testers give their approval.

After the final-release is published, the full development cycle starts again for the next minor version. Only the Project manager can approve new changes to the final releases.