VTK 9.3.0 Release Cycle

Development
1

Hi all,

It’s about time for another VTK release. The CI dashboards have been stabilizing fairly well and it seems like a good time to start cutting a release.

Tentative dates:

  • Jun 15: branch and create rc1
  • Jun 22: rc2 and bugfix focusing (CI should be solid by this point)
  • Jun 29: rc3 if needed (final if possible); revert becomes more likely for issues that arise
  • Jul 6: rc4 if needed (final if possible); platform/compiler fixes only by now
  • Jul 13: rc5 if needed (final if possible)
  • Jul 20: final release (if all else fails)

First up, the next release is planned for about 4 months from now (late September/early October) with a similar schedule (see below). So if you miss this release, the next one shouldn’t be too far away. With CI and the robot able to help out more and the release process being more structured, there isn’t as much manual work involved anymore.

Second, it is up to code authors to ping reviewers for MRs. We cannot commit to reviewing everything just because it was submitted, sorry. Please tag MRs with the 9.3 milestone to at least get some metadata wrangling involved.

Third, in order to keep the release under control, as we get closer to the final release, features are likely to be reverted rather than waiting for a fix (waiting for fixes that never happened is why 8.2.1 never got released). If a problem is there on Monday and you can get to it on Thursday, it is likely to be reverted until it can be fixed. In order to bring the change back, running git revert -m1 $merge_commit will undo a merge and can be added to the MR that fixes it up. Alternatively, the branch can just be redone as if from scratch; up to you.

Thanks,

–Will

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2

Note that to more easily identify and lookup posts like this one, these have been associated the release-process tag.

3

When is the RC1 supposed to be tagged ?
According to the proposed schedule it should be done but I haven’t found anything.
Can we still propose Merge request for 9.3.0 ?

4

RC1 is just about done, had some roadblocks in July that prevented an earlier release. This is a tentative commit we’re basing the release candidate off of https://gitlab.kitware.com/vtk/vtk/-/commit/ceab7612c489bbe8742bd1ccf4dd1e97719e04f6, which is still subject to change depending on how the CI behaves.

You can still get MRs into 9.3.0 if you tag the 9.3 milestone (https://gitlab.kitware.com/vtk/vtk/-/milestones/20#tab-issues). We have a script that collects such MRs while the release candidate process is ongoing.

5

Just for clarification here’s our updated timetable:

  • Aug 4: branch and create rc1
  • Aug 11: rc2 and bugfix focusing (CI should be solid by this point)
  • Aug 18: rc3 if needed (final if possible); revert becomes more likely for issues that arise
  • Aug 25: rc4 if needed (final if possible); platform/compiler fixes only by now
  • Sep 1: rc5 if needed (final if possible)
  • Sep 8: final release (if all else fails)
6

Anyone looking for info about the release can consult the issue board: 9.3 · Milestones · VTK / VTK · GitLab

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