Hi Evergreeners,

Throwing out a release process idea for your feedback: what if we had github actions build tarballs on each commit (using make_release in build-only mode)?

In my imagination: the release process would be much the same as it is today until the make_release step.  The builder would generate the upgrade script and bump version numbers as they do today, then push those changes.  This push would trigger github actions to build the tarball, so the builder wouldn't have to.

As I see it:

* this would free us up from any issues and inconsistencies in the tarballs that result from folks' different environments and/or unclear instructions.

* folks could test the newest code from a tarball at any time

* if you catch a mistake after you're done building, you could simply push the correction and wait for the robot to generate an adjusted tarball, rather than needing to spin up your environment again or coordinate with somebody else.

* since make_release would be running *all* the time, we would be able to catch errors we introduce to that script early

* this would be an incremental step towards yet more automation of the build/release process

I believe we'd need to expire those tarballs after a certain amount of time so we don't hit github storage limits.

What do you think?

Thanks,

  -Jane