New Community Edition Release Process
Magento has matured and continues to evolve into the world’s premier eCommerce platform, with an ever growing and vibrant community. We decided to take the last few weeks to consider how to improve the release process to provide for more growth, more enhancement, more engagement and more involvement from the community, developers and customers.
After reviewing all the constructive community feedback, and input from multiple sources, we have decided to update the Community Edition release process to make the process clearer and more standardized for Magento users, testers and developers.
Starting with our next release we will add a suffix to every version number defining the Stability Status, defined as one of the following: alpha, beta, or rc. The Stability Status will also be followed by a number detailing the Stability Status version.
New Version Number Schema:
The new version schema will be as follows: X.Y.Z.P-Stability Status#
- X - Major version number - Major version changes, which include adding and removing features and functionality. These releases will provide an upgrade path to allow users to upgrade, and will have minimum backwards compatibility to previous major versions.
- Y - Minor version number - Minor version changes, which include the adding of new features and bug fixes. Upgrades should be straight forward. The release should have maximum backwards compatibility to previous minor versions.
- Z - Revision version number - Bug fixes and minimal new features. Upgrades should be straight forward. The release should be fully backwards compatible to current minor version.
- P - Patch version number - Urgent bug and/or security fixes. Upgrades should be straight forward. The release should be fully backwards compatible to current minor version.
- Stability Status# – How stable the release is (e.g. rc, beta, alpha), where # is the stability status number. The higher the number the more mature the release
Stability Status explanation:
- Alpha - A suffix of ‘alpha’ means that this is a preview release of the upcoming version. It is not recommended in any way to be used in a production environment and we do not make any guarantees that any of the features, functionality, API or code will be available in the stable release of this version and as such no business decisions should be made based on this release. It is released as a first look into the upcoming version and might include major bugs and issues. It is intended for the use of developers and testers that want to have insight into the core development of Magento.
- Beta - A suffix of ‘beta’ means that this is a more mature release than the alpha releases for this version. It is not recommended in any way to be used in a production environment. Since it is a more mature release there is a better chance that features, functionality, API and code will not change in the stable release of this version, but this is not guaranteed and no business decision should be made based on this release. Developers, testers and users are encouraged to test this release in a non-production environment and provide feedback on any issues they might find. Extension maintainers and developers are encouraged to test their extensions for compatibility with this release.
- Release Candidate (rc) – A ‘rc’ suffix means that the release is getting closer to being stable. It is not recommended to be used in a production environment but all features and functionality are locked in for this version. Code and API might change slightly to accommodate for bugs or issues that are found in this release. Developers, testers and users are highly encouraged to test this release and provide feedback on any issues they might find. Extension maintainers and developers are highly encouraged to test and update their extensions as needed for compatibility with this release.
- No stability level specified – If a release version number is not followed by any suffix from the above this means that this release is production ready and stable. We still highly recommend testing your site on a non-production environment before upgrading your live installation directly. All extensions should be updated to be fully compatible with this release.
We feel that this release process brings better clarity as to what to expect from every release and when a Magento installation should be upgraded. It will also provide more time for Magento Connect extension maintainers and developers to verify their extensions compatibility with the release of a stable version and to better serve the users of their extensions. As of now we plan to have up to 2 stable releases and numerous preview releases of the Community Edition per year. The Enterprise Edition release process will stay as is with four stable releases per year.
We would like to thank everyone in the community for their ongoing support and we hope you stick around to see all the great things to come, as we continue to expand avenues to contribution and transition the roadmap for the community edition to the community and the CAB. We look forward to releasing our next Community Edition version 1.4.0.0-alpha1 in the next few days.
1RayShan |posted August 8 2009
Much easier to understand. Stability level helps lots. hanks for introducing more transparency!
Ray
http://www.HolyCowCompany.com
2NeilA from Blue Mountains, Oz|posted August 8 2009
Excellent progress… looking forward to continued transparency and clarity of future directions of the community edition.
3Loïc from Paris, France|posted August 8 2009
I agree. This was needed.
4Mark_Kimsal from Michigan, USA|posted August 10 2009
Sorry, but I don’t see much more “clarity” here. Most people inferred this sort of behavior already, now we get a blog post confirming some loose standards of “minimal features” and “maximum backwards compatibility”.
The only thing I care about is: “Will my modules still work?”. And the only way to answer that is to have some real definitions of the changes that go on.
Changes to table names - new feature? minor change? does that constitute “maximum backwards compatibility”?
Changes to block class names (adding an ‘s’ or something) - what version number does that increase?
Splitting up of .phtml template files - is allowing for more flexibility a “new feature”?
Until the types of programming changes can be classified and organized into the above release numbers, it’s still just a situation where we all *hope* each other has the same definitions and ideas as our own.
5Kar |posted August 12 2009
Mark I think you’re being a bit unfair here. While many of the points you make are commonly held by many of us Magento developers I think these changes benefit everyone and every step Varien make to help ease our pain (of developing with Magento) is to be welcomed.
I think a clear release process is a huge help. Far too often there’s a new version simply churned out with many bug fixes - but sadly also with many new buggy elements.
You need to upgrade to fix existing problems and then you run into new ones.
This process, while still needing more from Varien (to make our lives easier) goes quite a ways to ensuring we can deploy robust releases without fearing the dreaded ‘my store is broke’ calls from clients.
It’s free software at the end of the day and we do have to be mindful of that.
6diglin from Zurich - Switzerland|posted August 12 2009
I guess with you Mark Kimsal but it’s already a good first step. Now that’s clear that the next step is to provide to the community better feedback concerning what are the deep or not deep changes in the core code.
The other step is to get more response of the core Team on the forum about some important modification made in Magento.
See you for the next steps
7lisali from London, UK|posted August 12 2009
That’s great - but where is Magento staff in the forums? Answering or commenting on bug reports? Very, very disappointing. What kind of community are you building if you have no interest in interacting with it?
Thanks!
8oshipper from New York, NY|posted August 12 2009
After many implementations and subsequent upgrades have to totally agree with both Mark and Lisali.
Magento is not free. Real businesses invest serious money to implement, troubleshoot and host a custom installation.
It is also a business that makes Varien alot of money and people need to understand that the “Free” Community Edition is their marketing expense.
If Community Edition is neglected in favor of EE and/or public documentation continues to suck then this is something that favors Varien, the Partners and licensees of the EE. If this is ongoing as it has been since 1.0 it starts to look intentional whether true or not.
Something to remember is that without all the community contributions that have taken the software this far there are much fewer partners, no users of the EE version and no one needs to buy the official user guide. Hopefully this is something that Varien appreciates and the community outreach is sincere and will take the comments into consideration.
9craigm |posted August 12 2009
Yes, the documentation sucks, parts of the standard implementation (like search) are dreadful and perhaps they could have handled the release of the Enterprise Edition more transparently to please the more idealistic amongst the Magento community, but the breadth and depth of Varien’s achievement in building what they have built is nothing short of staggering (to me at least).
If,like me, you are using the community edition then there is an obvious limit to your platform development war chest because to be honest the Enterprise Edition is (as far as these things go), dirt cheap. I’ve previously run pretty modest ecommerce businesses and our budget for ecommerce software was 10x what the EE costs - not because we were flush with cash, but because that was what these things cost even for a smallish business.
As such there really has to be a bit of realism. Magento is better than ecommerce software that businesses were paying high six figures or even seven figures for just a few years ago. Not only have Varien provided a community edition and done so much to get the community off the ground, they seem to be doing their best to let the community have a genuine stake in the product.
10rainman127 |posted August 13 2009
ya know, Magento is not perfect but it’s free and it kicks ass over whoever is in 2nd place....
11lisali from London, UK|posted August 13 2009
Magento is not free. Nothing really is. How is something that the community has spent thousands of hours on testing, debugging and bug reporting FREE - especially when someone then takes it, repackages it, and sells it as a “premium” product?
12rainman127 |posted August 13 2009
mine is only one opinion of course. I’ve spent many hours as well but I’m guessing no where near the number of hours Varien has spent. All I can tell you is so far I have spent zero dollars and have a great product.
I don’t see a realistic alternative out there. And remember , we all chose to be here… again just one opinion…
13lisali from London, UK|posted August 13 2009
@rainman127 - I completely agree! However, I’m just disappointed that Varien is not interested in interacting with the community - there are no staff members in the forum, bug reports are ignored...etc.
14chinesedream |posted August 13 2009
lisali, I have spent as many hours as you, perhaps more - bug reports, troubleshooting, giving feedback etc...and I tried to be helpful in the forum whenever possible. Magento is FREE as far as I see it, so please don’t count me and many who have spent countless hours testing, filing bug reports as your ‘community’.
I think this statement of your is ungrateful (in the sense of decency), unfair:
especially when someone then takes it, repackages it, and sells it as a “premium” product?
Give and take! That is the fair game and decency. If you feel you are betrayed and taken advantage of by the hours you have spent, why are you still here if I may ask.
15richclever |posted August 19 2009
Personally I am pleased with this new release process. We have been wondering how we would manage the deployment of all the new versions that have been released. Now we are likely to just install the stable releases when they have been tested with our modifications etc.
The one thing that does concern me is security issues. If a security bug is fixed how is that going to be released? Will there be a minor release that just addresses the flaw or will there be a release that includes the security fix along side ‘new’ functionality and is possibly going to break other areas (basically a release like we get now). Also, how far back will versions be supported for with security fixes?
All in all I am very positive about the new release cycle but would like the security fix issue to be cleared up so we all know what to expect.
16YoavKutner |posted August 19 2009
@richclever - if there is an urgent security fix needed for a stable version it will be released as a Patch as described above.
Thanks
yoav
17richclever |posted August 19 2009
Thanks Yoav,
What form will these patches take? Will it be an actual patch file, a diff file or delivered via SVN etc. (Just relaying questions from the team I work with). Also how will these patches be announced? We’ll be blocking the notifier in the Magento Admin panel so won’t get anything from there.
Thanks again,
Rich
18YoavKutner |posted August 19 2009
Patches will be released as usual through PEAR Channel, SVN and archive.
Thanks
yoav
19chengli42 |posted August 25 2009
Personally I am pleased with this new release process.
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20mint |posted September 30 2009
I do not know if this is the right place to post this comment but in the 1.4 release i have found that the “magento connect” function does not work or even display a page one the request has been made
Craig