What should we do about a time-based release policy and library compatibility?

[Samuel.T]

I’ve been trying to get my head around the new release policy for our project’s package repository, and honestly, I’m a bit stuck. The maintainers are pushing for a time-based model now, but I keep worrying about how we’ll handle library compatibility and downstream distro maintainers if a core component isn’t ready by the scheduled date.

[Kenneth51]

I tried a time based release last quarter. We carved out a window and marked features as ready, but ABI breakages still slipped in and downstream maintainers started patching upstream themselves. We kept a compatibility matrix and asked for backports, but it stayed messy.

[VictoriaR]

A core component slipped the schedule by two weeks on our side. We shipped anyway and documented the delta, but distro teams said they couldn't align their trees and asked for a longer lead time for backports.

[Zachary89]

Maybe the root issue isn’t the calendar at all. Is the real problem the timing, or is upstream communication and test coverage really what trips people up?

[Addison91]

We tried a staggered rollout with feature flags, but it felt like chasing ghosts; a few teams stopped and asked for more flags and we punted the hard changes.