Target Release Dates for Jira 5.0 and GH 5.8

[Michael Bennette]

Hi, I've been reading lots of announcements and blogs about the upcoming releases for Jira 5.0 and GreenHopper 5.9. I understand that there are release candidates coming out, testing is ongoing, and the RC's are available for download. But I'm not able to find if there are any target dates for when these releases will be available for us to use in our production. I'm eager to get the latest and greatest =).

I understand the reasons for not giving the exact dates for the release. But is there a target month or even quarter of when these are targeting to release? Is there a page that will share this info? I am trying to plan for our migration. We're on Jira 4.4.1 and GH 5.7.4 and I know there are more recent versions available. But if it's not too far away, I may want to bypass the effort to migrate to the current latest and wait for Jira 5.0/GH 5.9.

[AndreyevM · Accepted solution]

May we predict this release month?! ;-)

On what is new page I see all recent JIRA releases with date:

• 4.0: Oct/2009
• 4.1: Apr/2010
• 4.2: Oct/2010
• 4.3: Mar/2011
• 4.4: Aug/2011

They had released two versions by year: one in April and another in October. Then in 2011 they 'advanced' it in 2 months.

From EAP release notes pages I see that version 4.4 had 6 EAP versions. Version 5.0 had today 5 EAP versions, so they may release just another one or two. Each recent EAP version was released in 2 or 3 weeks.

So I guess that the next version (5.0) will be released after January but before March.

What is your bet?

[Michael Bennette]

These are some great details here of the history! I just started using Atlassian tools so I couldn't give an accurate guess, but what you put here makes a lot of sense and I wouldn't bet against it. Looking forward to the new releases!

[sclowes]

Hi Michelle,

We don't normally provide detailed timelines in advance of release, however you can expect to see JIRA 5.0 and GreenHopper 5.9 early in the new year.

Thanks,

Shaun

[Michael Bennette]

Thank you Shaun, that's encouraging. Is there a way to join a group or notification of some sort to hear about when it's released and available for production use? Otherwise, I'll be manually checking =).

[Hugh Prior]

A few more snippets which may (or may not) help to guess the release date, and will surely have the Atlassian insiders giggling, since they surely (or maybe not) know better than us the probable release date.

1) The documentation has already switched to use the JIRA 5 documentation by default! If you go to the documentation link, by default you are presented with the JIRA 5 documentation with the message "This documentation relates to JIRA 5.0.x Beta and RCs only.
The latest official version is JIRA 4.4.x":

http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/JIRA+Documentation

2) JIRA 4.0, 4.2, 4.3 and 4.4 all had a number of Beta releases, but each only had one Release Candidate (RC1). JIRA 5.0 is now on RC2. Since the Release Candidate is a sort of "yes, we think this is ready and this could be the final release, but we just want to make absolutely sure Release", to go to a RC2 is a sort of "yes, we thought RC1 was ready and could be the final release, but we just wanted to make absolutely sure, and in the end we found an important bug or two, and so now we've created another version, and this time we really really think this is ready but we just want to make absolutely 100% sure Release".

http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Beta+Releases

3) Compare the gap between RC and Production releases:

4.0

RC1: September 22, 2009

http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/JIRA+4.0+RC1+Release+Notes

Production: April 7, 2010

http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/JIRA+4.1+Release+Notes

4.2

RC1: 12 October 2010

http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/JIRA+4.2+RC1+Release+Notes

Production: 21 October 2010

http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/JIRA+4.2+Release+Notes

4.3

RC1: 18 February 2011

http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/JIRA+4.3+RC1+Release+Notes

Production: 16 March, 2011

http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/JIRA+4.3+Release+Notes

It seems that for a minor release (4.0 to 4.2, 4.3 etc.) there is less than a month between RC and Production.

For a major release (e.g. 3.x to 4.0) there was over 6 months.

Given that 5.0 RC2 was only released on Dec 8 2011, I would not hold my breath for now. If you say 6 months then it could easily be June 8.

http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/JIRA+5.0+RC+2+Release+Notes

I'm going to stick my neck out and estimate a March 8th 2011 release date!!

[sclowes]

Hi Michelle,

You might want to sign up for the Atlassian newsletter, it will include product release annoucements. Releases are also announced on our Twitter feed (http://twitter.com/atlassian), and on our blog which you can subscribe to via email (http://blogs.atlassian.com/).

Regards,

Shaun