DrupalCon Austin 2014: THE ROAD TO 8.1
Channel: Drupal Association
Date: 04/06/2014

Speakers: Crell
At DrupalCon Prague, the core team decided to adopt a more incremental release cycle for Drupal 8. Rather than saving up all changes and improvements for a mythical Drupal 9 sometime in the distant future, we will plan for a minor release of Drupal 8 every six months. Each release will offer improved functionality, enhnaced APIs, and -- for the first time ever -- backward compatibility. That's what Drupal 8's new architecture buys us.

But wait, what was that P word? Plan? Yes, plan. In order to ensure that the new release cycle is successful, we need to plan now for how we're going to manage what changes are and are not allowed in minor releases of Drupal. We will also need to take steps to ensure that the 8.0 release has the clean extension points we need to support non-breaking improvements, and that we have adequately communicated to the community and to our users what they can rely on... and what they can't.

This session will lay out a plan for how to prepare for 8.1, how to manage expectations around minor releases, and what we need to do, now, to ensure a smooth transition to the new release cycle.