RC (release candidate) version publish system planning

[hikalkan]

We want to publish a RC version before the stable release even for minor versions (like 3.x). For minor versions, 1 week RC would be fine before the stable version. For major versions, we may publish the RC 2-4 weeks ago based on the case.

First RC version will be 3.2.0-rc1. If needed, we may publish 3.2.0-rc2 and so on... until the stable 3.2.0 version.

• CLI should provide a way of creating templates with RC packages when we use the --preview option.
• Add the same preview option to the "Direct download" on the abp.io web site.
• The documentation web site will also support the RC system and allow to read the RC version of the document if requested. By default it shows the latest stable but we can swith to the RC version. We only need to show the RC if it is the latest version. Once we release the stable, no need to show the RC in the version list anymore.

BTW, we can also consider to add --nightly-build option to generate the template with the latest nightly builds, but in this case we can not promise that it is compiled.

This issue is just for the initial planning & discussions. We wll create other issues to implement it.

Nightly Builds vs RC versions

We are also publishing nightly preview packages. You can use these packages as described here. The main difference from the RC versions is that these nightly preview packages are released from the dev branch, so you get yesterday's development today, which is pretty fine. The life time of a nightly build package is 1 day.

RC package life time is typically a few weeks and more importantly, we will not add new features to the RC. We will only make important bug fixes and make it the final stable version. The development done in this time period will be available in the next RC and the stable version.