📣 Announcement: Monthly Release Information dashboard
GitLab monthly releases are published each month.
teamDelivery-Releases is introducing a Grafana dashboard "delivery: Release Information" that includes information and status of the monthly releases in order to increase discoverability, visibility, and transparency about GitLab releases.
Grafana dashboard "delivery: Release Information"
What is on the dashboard?
This is the first iteration of the dashboard. Currently it shows the following information:
- Active monthly release version
- Active monthly release date
- Current status of the active monthly release
- Links for release-related resources
We are aiming for this dashboard to contain more information in future iterations, such as information and status about the patch/security release. It will also be iterated further upon feedback.
Why did we introduce this dashboard?
The impact of GitLab releases spans multiple GitLab departments, however, the full picture of them is limited to the Delivery team.
This dashboard information is to be consumed by the stage groups, so they can easily monitor the status of the monthly release, and plan accordingly. We hope to increase discoverability and transparency about the release processes with the introduction of this dashboard.
Who does this impact?
- Stage group engineers, PMs, EMs
- Those inquiring information about current monthly release status
- Those planning merge requests/commits to be included in the milestone release
When does the dashboard information get updated?
The information displayed on this dashboard will continue to update as release managers proceed with the self-managed releases process.
FAQ
What about information about the patch/security releases?
Currently the dashboard contains information about the monthly releases. Information about the active patch releases is planned to be implemented in future iterations to come.
Will there be any changes to the ChatOps announcements made in slack channels?
The announcements that the release managers make via ChatOps
bot in slack channels such as #releases
do not plan to change in cadence. They will continue to contain information about the commit to be released. The announcement going forward will also contain the link to the dashboard for easier access.
Looking at the status, how can I know if a MR merge commit is included in the release?
There is a guaranteed commit that we usually announce on the Friday before the monthly release. This is when the status on the dashboard changes to "announced".
- "Open": MR merge commits are expected to be included in the release
- "Announced": MR merge commit is not guaranteed to be included in the release (since it may not be fully deployed to production before the RC gets tagged)
- "RC Tagged": MR merge commit is not included in the release
Please refer to https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/releases/#how-can-i-determine-if-my-merge-request-will-make-it-into-the-monthly-release for more information.
Feedback
If you have any comments, questions, or feedback about this dashboard, please post it on this issue, or on the #releases
slack channel.