Update release glossary to reflect the new release types
Context
Recent Delivery work has enabled more frequent security releases as a way to enable GitLab releases to meet bug and security SLAs and get fixes out to customers sooner. Patch and security releases have been combined, this means that patch releases will contain bug and security fixes, and the security release term will be deprecated soon.
Starting with 16.7, Delivery is experimenting with multiple security releases in one GitLab milestone, learning and iterating toward a new release schedule.
Thanks to this new schedule, release mentality can be updated from being reactive to being planned, which translates into the following release types:
- Patch and security releases being combined into a single release called: patch releases
- Critical security releases are now: unplanned critical releases (to be deprecated #19904)
To address backport requests, Delivery has the ability to ship individual patch releases for specific versions. In case of a major customer incident, an unplanned release can be performed, which should be treated as an incident, e.g. RCA done by the team who introduced the bug and forced an unplanned release (#20059)
Proposal: Update the release glossary to reflect the new release types
Release terms need to be updated on the handbook to reflect the new release types
To do
-
Update the releases handbook page gitlab-com/content-sites/handbook!5428 (merged) -
Add a new section for patch releases gitlab-com/content-sites/handbook!5428 (merged) -
Remove security release section gitlab-com/content-sites/handbook!5428 (merged) -
Follow-up: Align the rest of the handbook #20199