Kepler release roadmap

The Kepler Release Process

Releases are meant to allow for stable management of versions of Kepler that we intend to support over time. Therefore, these release procedures are designed to allow continued development while maintaining branches of Kepler stable releases. The procedure:

Overall Kepler releases are based on a standard set of modules that are released simultaneously or with an earlier release
Version numbers have 3 parts: major.minor.patch, e.g., 1.3.2 represents the first major release, third minor release, and second patch release

Major releases represent new architectures or large functionality shifts, probably losing compatibility with previous releases
Minor releases represent additional features but mostly compatible changes
Patch releases represent minor changes that are backward compatible
Alpha, Beta, and Release candidate designators can be appended on the end to indicate a pre-release that is not yet feature complete (alpha), feature complete but not yet tested fully enough for release (beta), or feature complete and tested andin final review before release (release candidate). These designations appended on the end of the releases, resulting in release names such as kepler-1.1.0a1, kepler-1.1.0b1, kepler-1.1.0rc1.

Releases should not be tagged in SVN with official version numbers until the release has been tested and verified; before that point, use symbolic branch names and release candidate names
It is our intention that major version releases of Kepler (e.g., 2.0.0, 3.0.0) will ship with an installer that allows one to bootstrap the installation process by installing the whole Kepler system. Minor and patch releases for each module that is compatible with a major release will be available through the Kepler Module Manager. In the future, we may also provide an upgrade path via the module manager for major releases, but for the time being we expect to continue to use installers for major upgrades.
Non-standard module releases can occur independently of the overall Kepler release, and are versioned independently. For example, when Kepler 2.0.0 is released, it will not include several 3rd party modules (e.g., ppod, reporting, comad), but these modules will be released independently (e.g., reporting-1.0.0) and will be instalable through the module manager.

Release: Kepler 2.0.0

Overall Goal: Introduce release incorporating versioned modules and extensions, fixes critical stability issues in Kepler and Ptolemy, and adds selected features that improve system usability.

Target Date: Kepler 2.0 Released, June 24, 2010

Release page: Kepler 2.0 Release Roadmap