Announcement: The monthly release date is moving to the third Thursday of each month
Starting with the 16.6 release, the release cadence is being updated to be the third Thursday of each month. This change has the potential to impact your workflow if you are a part of:
- An engineering group (part of any department that works with GitLab.com)
- The product group
This issue gives details about the release process changes. For all other process changes, see Move the monthly release date from the 22nd to ... (gitlab-com&2184)
What is changing in the release process?
Starting with the 16.6 release, the release date is moving from the 22nd to the third Thursday of each month. The 16.6 start date will be on 2023-10-23 (as expected) and the scheduled release date will be 2023-11-16.
Please account in your workflow the 16.6 milestone duration, it will be shorter than usual at 3.5 weeks and future milestones will vary in length but usually be 4 or 5 weeks.
Why is this changing?
This is a change created in response to a cross-functional effort to adjust the monthly release date to be a dynamic one. Please refer to Move the monthly release date from the 22nd to ... (gitlab-com&2184) and the external announcement for additional details
When is this changing?
The release preparation will start one week before the release date on Friday, in the case of the 16.6 release, the release preparation will start on 2023-11-10. Future releases will honor this arrangement as well, the release preparation will start the Friday before the scheduled release date on Thursday.
How is this different from the current release process?
The only differences from the current release process are the release scheduled date and release preparation dates. The GitLab release process, along with GitLab.com deployments, patch, and security releases stay the same.
FAQ
What about the schedule of security and patch releases?
The schedule of patch and security releases stays as-is: patch releases and security releases will continue to be scheduled once a month after the monthly release. Please refer to the Maintenance Policy and our Releases Handbook page for more info
Where I can see the dates for upcoming releases?
The release schedule information is available on the GitLab Releases page. This page lists the upcoming and historic releases along with their release date.
Will the release candidate and final commit be announced?
Yes, the release preparation process doesn't change. In the run-up to the release date, candidate commit and final commit will be announced on Slack.
If I have a question about this change, where should I post it?
Please redirect general questions about the release date change to Move the monthly release date from the 22nd to ... (gitlab-com&2184).
Feel free to post any questions about the release process on this issue or on the #releases Slack channel.