Beta (testing) periods for candidate releases

[TimTaylor]

Will you consider doing beta (testing) periods for ggplot2 releases? I've found in the past with ggplot2 that my CI hasn't been good enough to catch small changes (e.g. deprecation warnings) so it would be good to catch these things in advance.

I'm aware I can test the main branch but having a release candidate would make things more focussed.

Hope this makes sense. Cheers for the continued development.

[teunbrand]

We typically split off a release candidate once we're tinkering with the last steps of the release and want to continue development on the main branch. This makes these release candidates very ephemeral. We try to inform people of reverse dependency failures 2 weeks prior to releasing a new version, so arguably that is the beta testing period. Is there something more formal you're proposing?

[TimTaylor]

Is there something more formal you're proposing?

Probably just flagging of the commit or branch to test in some additional form of announcement.

I think where I've been caught out in the past is deprecation warnings displayed in some rendered output. Like I say, likely a weakness in my own CI, but a small heads up to test a certain commit/branch would be appreciated and, hopefully, not too burdensome. How best to deliver the heads up (socials?), I'm not sure.

[teunbrand]

I'll discuss with Thomas, but while we got you here: we're planning a release soon so testing now would be ideal!

[TimTaylor]

I'll discuss with Thomas, but while we got you here: we're planning a release soon so testing now would be ideal!

Just have ;-). All good AFAICT!