[gmx-developers] GROMACS 2020 release roadmap

[Paul bauer]

Hello GROMACS developers,

as the year is getting on and one third of it is almost over, I would 
like to share the plans for the GROMACS 2020 release schedule with you.

The plan is to have the infrastructure stable in mid August, with the 
first beta version following in mid September.
Subsequent beta versions and release candidates are planned for the 
following months, with the final release data again on January 1st 2020.

In table form this means:
August 15th - Stable infrastructure
September 15th - 2020-beta1, release-2020 branch with feature freeze
September to November - A number of beta versions, likely in 2 to 3 week 
intervals
November 30th - 2020-rc1
December 15th - 2020-rc2, depending on stability there may be more 
release candidates
January 1st 2020 - release of GROMACS 2020

As was mentioned last year already, those dates are meant to be firm.  
I'm planning to keep to the calendar for the releases, meaning that a 
beta will not be delayed to wait for a new feature to be added.
This means that if you are planning to integrate code into GROMACS 2020, 
it has to be *merged* into master before the beta cut-off date, and 
should be available for general code review *before* the summer, to give 
the all the developers a chance to comment on it in time.
If you are planning to add code that touches a large number of files, it 
is also recommended to start a thread on Redmine sooner than later to 
help with the code design discussion before your change hits Gerrit.

Mark has created a target in Redmine 
(https://redmine.gromacs.org/versions/88) and a corresponding issue 
(https://redmine.gromacs.org/issues/2899) outlining our plans for 
stabilizing our infrastructure (meaning testing matrix and general code 
refactoring) before the first beta.

I'm looking forward to see your changes in Gerrit and the discussions on 
Redmine!

Cheers
Paul

-- 
Paul Bauer, PhD
GROMACS Release Manager
KTH Stockholm, SciLifeLab
0046737308594