TEE KV server release schedule and support window proposal

[peiwenhu]

The TEE KV server team is proposing our release schedule and support window for the time horizon of the next year or so with the aim to strictly improve it further in the future. Please share feedback.

As a reminder the current TEE KV server code is released in our Github repo. The latest release as of this post is 0.16.

Support window

Starting from release 0.17, a released version of the system is supported for no less than 180 days since the date of its release. The source of truth is the table below.

Actively supported versions

Release Version	End of support date
v0.16	7/19/2024
v0.17	1/24/2025

Support window considerations

• End of support will not happen during the following major holiday seasons:
  • the New Year holiday season (December through mid-January)
• End of support will not happen at the end of the month (last 5 business days of the month).
• Please file a Github issue if you think there are other times that should be taken into consideration.

Support coverage

• Patches to actively supported versions will be released for the following incidents:
  • Security vulnerability patches for the system and its dependencies
  • Critical bug fixes
• Onboarding and troubleshooting (non-emergency consultation and emergency oncall) support is provided for actively supported versions.
• Consultation support will be provided to non-active versions only if questions are filed as Github issues and the support will be provided on a best-effort basis. For bugs, fixes will not be patched to the non-active versions and will instead be added to the next released version (and other active versions if the fix meets the patching criteria).

Release cadence and schedule

A new official release is provided every quarter. In between releases there can be unbounded patch releases for the covered support mentioned above. A release can be expected around the beginning of each quarter and the source of truth is recorded below:

Planned releases

Release	Expected release date
v0.17.0	07/12/2024
v0.18.0	10/01/2024

Feature preview

The main branch of the repo always contains the latest code. To preview features outside a production environment, use the main branch to build the system.

A higher release cadence

We expect to increase the release cadence in the future. We will revisit and reassess this arrangement a year from now.