Enhancing Stability: WooCommerce’s New Release Cycle

Brent MacKinnon Avatar
Brent MacKinnon

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We’re excited to announce improvements to our release process, focusing on increased stability and quality. Based on feedback from our community and internal discussions, we’re extending our release cycle to allow for more thorough testing and better outcomes.

Key changes

1. Extended release cycle

  • Our release cycle will now be 5 weeks long, both as a target and minimum. If we face any delays, the start of the next cycle will also be pushed back (no overlapping cycles).

2. Feature freeze and release timing:

  • Feature freeze for the next release (e.g., 9.5.0) begins on the day we ship the current release (e.g., 9.4.0).
  • Releases are now scheduled for Mondays, providing a larger window to address last-minute issues.

3. Pre-releases for stability:

  • We’ll aim to ship a pre-release update at the start of each feature freeze.
  • Weekly updates will follow if needed, helping teams prepare and adapt to changes more smoothly.

Immediate changes for 9.4 release:

  • Feature Freeze: Remains on September 18, 2024 
  • Final Release Date: Moved to October 21, 2024 (now on a Monday)

Updated release schedule

VersionFeature FreezeBetaRelease CandidateFinal Release
9.4Sep 18, 2024Sep 23, 2024Oct 14, 2024Oct 21, 2024
9.5Oct 21, 2024Oct 28, 2024Nov 11, 2024Nov 25, 2024
9.6Nov 25, 2024Nov 25, 2024Dec 16, 2024TBA

Benefits of the new process

  • Increased stability and quality of releases.
  • More predictable release cycles.
  • Extended testing periods for thorough quality assurance.
  • Improved preparation time for the community and partners.

Community involvement: Beta testing

The success of our new release process relies heavily on community participation, especially during the beta testing phase. We encourage all WooCommerce developers to get involved in testing pre-releases.

To learn how you can contribute to improving WooCommerce stability through beta testing, please visit our Beta Testing Guide.

We believe these changes will provide more predictability while maintaining flexibility when needed. As always, we value your feedback and are committed to continually improving our processes to better serve the WooCommerce community.

Have questions or comments? Please share them below or reach out to our support team.

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5 responses to “Enhancing Stability: WooCommerce’s New Release Cycle”

  1. Luca S. Avatar
    Luca S.

    Thank you for your continued efforts in enhancing and streamlining the release schedule.
    I would like to raise a potential concern: it may be worth considering “blackout” periods during which new releases should be avoided. For instance, the planned release of version 9.5.0 on November 25th falls just before Black Friday, which is one of the busiest and most critical sales periods for many stores.
    Probably, avoiding such dates could help prevent unnecessary (potential) disruptions during these high-traffic times.

    Reply
    1. Brent MacKinnon Avatar
      Brent MacKinnon

      Thanks for the heads up! Good catch on the Black Friday issue – we definitely don’t want to mess with anyone’s busiest sales periods.

      We’ll take a closer look at the 9.5.0 release and see if we need to shift it around. Going forward, we’ll take a look at each release and try to make smart choices to avoid any major disruptions.

      Really appreciate you flagging this. It’s exactly the kind of heads-up we need to keep things running smoothly. If you spot anything else that might cause hiccups, just give us a shout.

      Reply
      1. nam Avatar
        nam

        I think this change should start from 2025 or from woocommerce version 10.0

        Reply
        1. Brent MacKinnon Avatar
          Brent MacKinnon

          Thanks for sharing. Is there any particular reason we should wait?

          Reply
  2. Gregory Avatar
    Gregory

    Awesome to see that Woocommerce is being improved on a continuous basis!
    Keep it up guys!!

    Reply

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