What is the Cobalt release/deployment schedule for each environment?

Andrew Gerber

Hello,

I have a few general questions about the Cobalt release/deployment schedule:

1. How often and when do deploys happen for each Cobalt environment?
2. When/how does code make it Prod and how does this correspond to the Cobalt release/iteration number?
3. What (if any) are the situations where code needs to be checked in to one of the "Releases" branches in TFS?

Any other information that might not be covered in the questions would be appreciated as well!

Thanks!

mark.maruska

**Release and Iteration.** The release/iteration number is formatted as *release.iteration*. The release number comes from the major product releases for WestlawNext that are generally aligned with AALL and NSM. The release identifies the major features or changes that will be completed. The iteration number comes from the Agile sprint where stories and tasks are assigned. For example, 11.9 is Release 11, Iteration 9. In other words, the release/iteration number is assigned to a set of code that as a unit is built and deployed. It generally follows the environments, such as:

- 11.9 PROD
- 11.10 QED
- 12.0 DEMO & CI

**Deployment.** The Cobalt deployment schedule is shown on the front page of [Cobalt Central](http://tfsnpt.int.thomson.com/). You will notice that CI is not listed; that is because CI is built and deployed continuously: after each code change.

**Development.** The current iteration is the one in DEMO/CI (e.g., 12.0). The code for the current iteration is maintained in TFS under the Development folder. When the iteration ends, the last built package is deployed to QED. If there are no hotfixes for QED then that same package for that iteration will be deployed to PROD. However, there are usually hotfixes... and that's were the Releases folder in TFS comes in.

**Hotfix.** Changes that are needed in QED or PROD are added into the corresponding Releases folder. For example, if a change to 11.10 in QED is needed, then the changes would be checked-in to Development (for DEMO/CI), and then the same changes would be merged in to the Releases folder under the folder with the 11.10 name. That Releases code is built and that becomes the new package for that iteration. In other words, the code is built into packages for deployment. If changes are needed in QED or PROD, then the code for that iteration plus the changes are built into a new package to be deployed. Any other changes that occurred in Development are not picked up for a QED or PROD build; only the code in the Releases folder is used. Refer to the wiki article, [How to do a hotfix](http://tfsnpt.int.thomson.com/Sites/Cobalt Website/Team Wiki/Wiki Pages/How to do a hotfix.aspx).

**Shared Platform.** Note, the release/deployment schedule is a bit different for WestlawNext vs. other Cobalt products. That is, products on the shared Cobalt platform are usually built/deployed a couple days after WestlawNext.