[DISCUSS] JanusGraph 0.4.0 release

[Florian Hockmann]

Hi,

now that 0.2.3 is released and 0.3.2 comes closer to a state where it can be released, I want to start the discussion for the 0.4.0 release. It will be a major release with a substantial number of contributions, considering that the last release from master was in October (0.3.1).

Some major new changes in v0.4.0:

• Upgrade to TinkerPop 3.4.1.
• Support CQL for OLAP which completes our CQL support.
• Performance improvements for pre-fetching of properties.
  
• Dropped support for deprecated backend versions.

The release milestone can be found here. It currently contains 2 open PRs and 5 issues. The issues are:

• #915: Support HBase 2.0
• #1513: Add instructions for opting out from codacy notifications
• #734: Add systemd unit file
• #1540: Create noarch rpm spec for rpm creation
• #1541: Create documentation and scripts to create deb packages

The upgrade to support HBase 2.0 seems to be quite a big task and considering that it has been already 8 months since the last release of JanusGraph from master, I suggest that we don't let this delay the 0.4.0 release. We can just support HBase 2.0 in a subsequent 0.4.x release or release 0.5.0 in a few months if we need a major version bump for this.

The other open issues seem to me like they can basically be addressed in any release. I'm therefore inclined to move them to the v0.4.x milestone so they don't delay any release. If someone provides a PR for one of them shortly, we can still include them in 0.4.0 and otherwise they can land in 0.4.1 or 0.4.2.

My plan is to release 0.4.0 soon after 0.3.2, so I will probably continue with the release preparations when we have a VOTE thread for 0.3.2.

Are there any concerns with this plan? Please share any feedback you might have in general.

Regards,

Florian

[Chris Hupman]

I agree that #1513, #734, #1540, and #1541 can be added to any release and do not require a major release. Since I'm pretty sure I'm the one that tagged them in the first place I'll move them to 0.4.x. I don't have enough background to really assess #915, but I agree that if it has breaking changes we can just move it to 0.5.0.

Cheers,

Chris

[Oleksandr Porunov]

Florian,

My "lessons learned" are not yet complete (it will be after the release). But I have created a draft PR so that it would be a little bit easier to proceed with the release: https://github.com/porunov/janusgraph/blob/release-lessons-learned/RELEASING.md (PR 1630)

I had some troubles along the way but they were successfully resolved with the Chris' help.

[Chris Hupman]

Hey Florian,

I was looking at the changelog for Tinkerpop 3.4.2 and saw a couple of improvements that look really nice. 

• Changed :> in Gremlin Console to submit the client-side timeout on each request.
  
• Added option to set per-request settings on a Traversal submitted via Bytecode.

Do you think it would be possible to update to TinkerPop 3.4.2 in JanusGraph 0.4.1? The ability to override the script timeout value without restarting the server would be a very nice addition. 

Regards,

Chris

On Friday, June 7, 2019 at 7:26:49 AM UTC-7, Florian Hockmann wrote:

[Florian Hockmann]

Hey Chris,

there are currently only two open PRs left for the 0.4.0 release and I think that we should really release 0.4.0 as soon as possible, considering how long it has been since the last release from master. I hope that we can merge these 2 PRs soon and then release 0.4.0 at the beginning of next week.

If someone provides a PR that we can review and merge in the next few days, then we can probably include it for 0.4.0. But since Oleksandr already gave that update a try and found out that it's non-trivial, I think we can better include it for 0.4.1.

There is also no reason in general not to release 0.4.1 relatively soon after 0.4.0. TinkerPop recently moved to a release schedule every 2 months and the experience looks good so far. One advantage of more frequent releases is that it doesn't really matter so much any more when a certain issue is fixed as there is no big difference in getting a fix included in the next release or in another release just 2 months later.

Regards,

Florian