🚀 Parse Server 5.0-beta released!

[mtrezza]

⭐️ Parse Server 5.0 (next major release)

The question pops up at times, so here is the status for the next major release:

The next major release of Parse Server 5.0 is estimated to occur later this year. The reason is that we are working on defining a release cycle with release automation that should bring a significant improvement in terms of release frequency and predictability for developers and reduction of release effort for maintainers.

In addition, we are aiming to introduce an alpha / beta distribution channel to let releases undergo testing and become more robust before official release. Currently, the master branch contains an unusual high number of breaking and conceptual changes some of which have not been thoroughly tested. Therefore - in any case - we aim to let this go though a beta distribution first to let it mature before official release.

In the meantime, we may release path or minor versions of Parse Server if required (version 4.x), which will not include the changes on master but only patches or features that are time critical and cannot wait until the major release.

Thanks to everyone for their patience and contributions while we keep working to make Parse Server better every day.

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⚠️ Important change for merging PRs from Parse Server 5.0 onwards!

We are planning to release the first beta version of Parse Server 5.0 in October 2021.

If a PR contains a breaking change and is not merged before the beta release of Parse Server 5.0, it cannot be merged until the end of 2022. Instead it has to follow the Deprecation Policy and phase-in breaking changes to be merged during the course of 2022.

One of the most voiced community feedbacks was the demand for predictability in breaking changes to make it easy to upgrade Parse Server. We have made a first step towards this by introducing the Deprecation Policy in February 2021 that assists to phase-in breaking changes, giving developers time to adapt. We will follow-up with the introduction of Release Automation and a branch model that will allow breaking changes only with a new major release, scheduled for the beginning of each calendar year.

We understand that some PRs are a long time in the making and we very much appreciate your contribution. We want to make it easy for PRs that contain a breaking change and were created before the introduction of the Deprecation Policy. These PRs can be merged with a breaking change without being phased-in before the beta release of Parse Server 5.0. We are making this exception because we appreciate that this is a time of transition that requires additional effort from contributors to adapt. We encourage everyone to prepare their PRs until the end of September and account for review time and possible adaptions.

If a PR contains a breaking change and should be merged before the beta release, please mention @parse-community/server-maintenance and we will coordinate with you to merge the PR.

Thanks for your contribution and support during this transition to Parse Server release automation!

[mtrezza]

🚀 Parse Server 5.0 has been pre-released

These are pre-releases that are not suitable for production environments.

Try it out in your development environment:

• via npm
  • use the beta channel parse-server@beta for the latest beta version
    or a version tag for a specific release, e.g. [email protected]
  • use the alpha channel parse-server@alpha for the latest alpha version
    or a version tag for a specific release, e.g. [email protected]
• via docker using the version tag, e.g. 5.0.0-beta.1 or 5.0.0-alpha.15

Help us find any bugs before official release!