When is the next release ?

[mboisson]

Last release of LibMesh is 1.5 years old, and there has been a lot of development. I have projects that depend on specific commits, but that is not appropriate to install on a large cluster (we want specific versions instead).

[jwpeterson]

Not sure what @roystgnr prefers, but IMO we could start a release branch now. I was doing somewhat regular releases for a while there, but it wasn't clear that anyone was actually using them... as far as I know most big projects are doing some form of a git submodule for libmesh at this time, and updating it as needed.

[mboisson]

Speaking as a package manager/software install for large HPC clusters, we very much prefer having releases (with sane versioning schemes) than having commit hashes and having to make up our own release scheme. All software on HPC cluster is installed through modules, and having a sane versioning scheme with actual releases makes it a lot simpler for everyone.

[roystgnr]

It would be a good time to start a release branch, IMHO.