How we managed 49 monthly releases

What this post added

This post details the practical implementation of GitLab's monthly release cadence, which began in October 2011 and reached its 49th release by December 2015. It elaborates on the 'why' behind time-based and monthly cycles, drawing inspiration from projects like Ubuntu and GNOME. It explains how work is organized through an Agile practice where team members pick up tasks from a pool, and how the 'Release Manager' role rotates monthly to ensure reliability and process improvement. The post also outlines the specific steps involved in preparing and executing a monthly release, including the creation of release candidates, testing, deployment to GitLab.com, and the final release at 12 am CET on the 22nd. It further discusses post-release activities like handling regression issues and patch releases, and emphasizes the advantages of this predictable schedule for open-source projects, fostering trust and indicating active development.