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This is the current (as of the 0.6.5 release) OpenSim lightweight Release Cycle recipe.

The goal is to run a cycle that churns out recommended code snapshots with reasonably regular intervals, and with a minimum of work for any one human resource. It should be a community effort, and anyone should be able to move the cycle forward.

If you're not acquainted with svn revision numbering schemes, see On revisions, tags and branches for additional info.

The Cycle:

1. Developers and Testers work on /trunk ("testers" being defined as "users feeding off trunk", also lovingly known as "trunkheads")
2. Developers and Testers identify suitable release candidate revisions, from the repository history. (for example, people on osgrid.org discuss this on their weekly meet-ups)
3. This revision is branched off as a "release candidate" (to /branches/0.6.5-rc1 in this case), and the version number is upped and committed only to this branch. We don't want to up the version number in trunk until we know we have a release.
4. Testers now switch their focus to running the rc until they can give feedback on whether "rc sux" or "rc rox". Key issues:
   • Has all version numbers been updated?
   • Does it play well with last version? Do we need to up the interface version as well?
   • Does it feel better or worse than last version?
   • Any critical errors that needs fixing first?
5. If any critical but fixable errors are found, these are fixed in trunk and the fixing revision is merged into the release candidate branch. (or vice versa, if that works out better)
6. If, even after this, testers agree that "rc sux" the project goes back to 1) to wait and look for the next rc (thusly named rc2)
7. If testers agree that "rc rox" the current rc revision is tagged as "-release" (to /tags/0.6.5-release in this case)
8. The "-rc1" branch is renamed to "-post-fixes" (to /branches/0.6.5-post-fixes in this case) for continued service awaiting the next cycle. The svn rename lets us keep the revision history back thru the rc branch history.
9. The version number (and optionally interface version) uppage is merged back into trunk. (this is a minor merge which will probably always succeed without conflict)
10. The project goes back to 1)

The output of this would be named revisions for each of these user categories:

• Grid/Region owners running services in production Feed off "-post-fixes" if they want stability first, or off "-release" if they want a known 'upgrade track'.
• Developers Feed off /trunk, or off -rc or -post-fixes if they want some stability while hunting bugs or doing protoyping.
• Testers Testers are committed to helping the devs find bugs at the prize of instabilities, crashes and loss of data. They therefore feed off the /trunk development branch or -rc depending on whether there is an RC pending release or not. (ie, is the latest version an RC, use that, if not, use /trunk) Everyone feeding off /trunk are collectively labeled 'testers', and any installation running on anything but a 'release' or 'post-fixes' revision is considered a 'test installation'.