Shorter release cycles

[rishavs]

Can we have a shorter release cycle for zig and make smaller but more frequent releases?
Its been 4+ months since the last release and a young language like Zig can benefit more from faster iterative updates.

• Zig users will get fixes and new features much faster
• more releases and their related discussions will get more mindshare from the tech crowd

Something to the tune of 1 release every month should be good.

so instead of doing a
0.5 -> 0.6 over 6 months, we could do
0.50 -> 0.51 -> 0.5x ... -> 0.60

[JesseRMeyer]

I think shorter release cycles grow in value the more stable the language is. Zig users are already living on the edge, and if they are wanting to get the latest changes, master is available as a nightly download from Ziglang.org.

Keeping the release cadence slow while the language undergoes many breaking changes achieves two social wins:
1.) When there is a release announcement, there is much to talk about. Many tiny changes normalize with high frequency.
2.) Window shoppers will be less hesitant to join the party if they feel what they learn now will soon be invalidated by the next short term cycle. The cost is with fewer announcements comes fewer eyes, which I think is your main point. I don't know which wins out at this stage in a language's lifecycle.

There is a large development win with a slow release cadence for immature languages: There is time to pause and ponder and experiment with multiple implementation paths without the pressure of meeting a deadline.

[andrewrk]

It's not time yet. @JesseRMeyer is correct that this has to do with stability. You'll notice we also don't have any bug fix releases yet. The "LLVM-locked" release cycle will remain status quo at least until the language is stabilized and specified (#75).

You'll have to trust me on this, I have put a lot of thought into how the release cycle works and will work in the future. I'm optimizing for getting to 1.0.0 as soon as possible, as well as attracting a steady, but not explosive, flow of new community members.

[fengb]

Maybe we should indicate that the nightly build is "almost as stable" as the release cycle? The versioned releases give a lot of warm fuzzy feelings that's largely untrue after about a month in.

[rishavs]

Thanks for helping me understand your thoughts on the release cycle. I am happy that its well thought out.