Bethany Seeger (Aug 23 2024 at 13:55): Bethany Seeger (Aug 23 2024 at 13:55):Hello,
We are pondering/planning our schedule for when we'd upgrade our Dataverse server to later releases and I was wondering what the release shedule/philosophy was for Dataverse.
I did notice this: https://guides.dataverse.org/en/latest/qa/overview.html#release-cadence-and-sprints
And I found, in the Dataverse Community email list:
...we tend to release when features and bug fixes are done. And we try to follow [http://semver.org](http://semver.org/) (MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH).
That was from 2016 and I was wondering if that's still the case - releases when there's enough new features/ fixed issues? Do you still follow Semantic Versioning?
https://groups.google.com/g/dataverse-community/c/xt2NtJpZlsk/m/xAPe51BHCwAJ
Thanks!
Bethany
Philip Durbin 🚀 (Aug 23 2024 at 14:10):Hmm, we have a newish doc called Proposal: Dataverse Software Release Planning but it isn't yet open to the public. Let me ask about that.
Philip Durbin 🚀 (Aug 23 2024 at 14:11):I imagine it's safe to at least share the "background":
Often in the past, Dataverse software releases were created on an ad hoc basis. For example, team members established a release theme (e.g., addressessing pull requests and issues focused on a specific feature or system upgrade) or they determined that a critical mass of code improvements had been made to warrant a release.
However, as the Dataverse Community has grown and the Dataverse Project team have taken on more grant-funded work the limitations of the ad hoc approach have become more clear. Dataverse Community members have asked for greater transparency about the timing and contents of releases. In addition, scheduling the design, implementation, and deployment of time-sensitive software improvements funded by different stakeholders has become necessary.
Moving from an ad hoc to a planned release strategy will help to address these stakeholder needs for better communication and development planning support.
Philip Durbin 🚀 (Aug 23 2024 at 14:12):You can see some changes in practice already. We've started announcing future release dates, like this: #community > Upcoming 6.4 release
Philip Durbin 🚀 (Aug 23 2024 at 14:14):And yeah, I'd saw we try to follow Semantic Versioning, not that it's easy. :grinning:
Philip Durbin 🚀 (Aug 23 2024 at 14:35):Philip Durbin said:
Hmm, we have a newish doc called Proposal: Dataverse Software Release Planning but it isn't yet open to the public. Let me ask about that.
@Bethany Seeger ok, this doc is open now. Please feel free to add comments!
Bethany Seeger (Aug 23 2024 at 14:50):Thanks, Phil! This is great and I'll take a look through the document.
And I know what you mean - it can be hard to follow Semantic Versioning. I'm glad you are trying though. :)
Philip Durbin 🚀 (Aug 23 2024 at 14:54):For major version such as Dataverse 4.0, 5.0, and 6.0 we've (so far) been tying them to the version of Payara (and Glassfish before that).
I just checked https://github.com/payara/Payara/releases and Payara 7 is not out yet.
Philip Durbin 🚀 (Aug 23 2024 at 15:12):And yeah, https://guides.dataverse.org/en/6.3/qa/overview.html#release-cadence-and-sprints is fairly recent and up to date. I'm pretty sure I wrote this:
"The decision to make a release can be based on the time since the last release, some important feature needed by the community or contractual deadline, or some other logical reason to package the work completed into a named release and posted to the releases section on GitHub."
Philip Durbin 🚀 (Aug 23 2024 at 15:13):I was hedging, obviously. In the doc you'll see "Minor release - regular releases that are time based (e.g. every 3 months)". I'd say that's an even more recent summary of what we're aiming for these days.
Bethany Seeger (Aug 23 2024 at 15:18):That makes sense. It's hard to balance getting new things out there people might be waiting for and having a predictable schedule. The 3 month cadence for minor releases seems reasonable.
Philip Durbin 🚀 (Aug 23 2024 at 16:06):Would you favor more frequent releases? Every two months? Or less, maybe every six months?
Philip Durbin 🚀 (Aug 23 2024 at 16:07):Also, something new we're trying related to releases is to ask what people want in the next release. Please see #community > Release 6.4 Proposals
Bethany Seeger (Aug 23 2024 at 17:43):Good question - I don't think we will want to update our system more than every 3-6months, so a more frequent release schedule wouldn't affect us (unless, of course, it was a bug fix we needed). That being said, we are just starting to talk about what we'd like to do to keep up with later versions now. I'm not sure where the team here will land with that. If something comes up in our discussions that seems relevant to what you're planning I'll share that info with you.
Philip Durbin 🚀 (Aug 23 2024 at 17:46):As you may know, Dataverse uses Solr under the hood and I can tell you it's hard to keep up with how often Solr releases! In practice, we upgrade when we need security fix or whatever, like you're saying.
Last updated: Nov 01 2025 at 14:11 UTC