Cypress: Proposal: Regular Release Cycle

[jennifer-shehane]

Proposal

Release a new version of Cypress every 2 weeks.

There are many pull requests that are merged in and working in the develop branch that do not get released regularly and makes users 😢

To Achieve

The main challenge in achieving a regular release cycle is our internal process. We will need to be stricter about our branching strategy and release process.

• develop branch should always have all tests passing and never have 'partial' features.
• Any new feature should always be in a 'feature branch'. When a feature is complete, it gets merged back into develop.
• Release every 2 weeks! It does not matter if another feature is close.
• Automate, document and/or disperse more responsibility of deploy process.
• This can only be done after 3.0 as there are a myriad of half-done features in the develop branch at the moment.

[bahmutov]

I just want to add one more to this list

• merge pull requests (after approval) as early as possible. No waiting until "starting the release" process; instead landing features in develop early gets us a chance to actually interact with the new code a little bit to flush out any hidden side effects.

[jennifer-shehane]

We have made some progress on this! Particularly where it comes to "Automate, document and/or disperse more responsibility of deploy process." Our DEPLOY.md doc has recently been updated with more documentation on the process. We also have more hands on the deploy process.

I'd still like to aim to have a set release cycle of 2 weeks. cc @flotwig

[flotwig]

An update on this: we've decided to aim for a maximum of two weeks between releases, with less time if a patch release needs to come out or something. This should provide a nice balance between time spent on release and time before new features are released to users.