Polaris Release Cadence and Roadmap Alignment

[flyrain]

Importance of a Defined Release Cadence

Establishing a predictable release cadence will help us:

• Deliver key roadmap features in a timely and structured manner.
• Provide clarity and transparency for contributors and users about what to expect in upcoming versions.
• Align with related projects, such as Apache Iceberg, to ensure compatibility and ease of integration.

Current Status and Proposal

We are currently preparing for the 0.9.0 release, which is scheduled to ship by January 2025. To maintain momentum and adapt to the fast-paced development in the REST catalog space, I propose that we adopt a three-month release cycle. This cadence will allow us to stay agile while ensuring regular updates.

Additionally, this schedule aligns with Iceberg’s release cycle, which could be beneficial if any Iceberg Spec changes require updates or synchronization with Polaris. While syncing releases with Iceberg isn’t mandatory, aligning them could help streamline cross-project compatibility.

Suggested Release Plan

Using this cadence as a baseline:

• 0.9.0: January 2025
• 1.0.0: April 2025
• 1.1.0: July 2025
• 1.2.0: October 2025 ...and so on.

It’s worth noting that actual release dates may shift by about one month, depending on development progress or unforeseen circumstances. We could adjust timelines as needed.

I’ve created related milestones(https://github.com/apache/polaris/milestones) in the project to reflect these timelines. I encourage everyone to review them and tag any relevant issues or pull requests with the appropriate versions.

Roadmap Integration

With these milestones in place, the roadmap will naturally take shape, driven by the features and fixes tagged in each release. Moving forward, we can:

• File new feature requests or bug fixes with milestone tags.
• Use these milestones as a guiding framework for project planning and prioritization.

[jbonofre]

I'm working on this one (it has been discussed with some community members).
For now, we have to fix blocker issue for rc2 and merge the enhanced runtime framework (which has an impact on release process).
I will define the roadmap and release pace for beginning of Jan.