Development Process

Versioning

VR-Spec will follow GA4GH recommendation for semantic versioning with semver 2.0. The VR-Spec GitHub repository will maintain the latest development code on the master branch for community review (see Release Cycle).

Release Cycle

Planned Features

Feature requests from the community are made through the generation of GitHub issues on the VR-Spec repository, which are open for public review and discussion. Feature requests identified to support an unmet need by the existing VR-Spec are scheduled for discussion in our weekly VR calls. These discussions are used to inform whether or not a feature will be planned for development. The Project Leadership is responsible for making the final determination on whether a feature is to be added to VR-Spec.

Requirements Gathering

Once a feature is planned for production, an issue requesting community feedback on use cases and technical requirements will be constructed (see example requirement issues).

Feature Development

Features will be developed to meet gathered requirements. Features ready for public review MAY be merged into the master branch by pull request through review and approval by at least one (non-authoring) Project Maintainer. Merged commits MAY be tagged as alpha releases when needed.

Version Review and Release

After completion of all planned features for a new minor or major version, a request for community review will be indicated by a beta release of the new version. Community stakeholders involved in the feature requests and requirements gathering for the included features are notified by Project Maintainers for review and approval of the release. After a community review period of at least two weeks, the Project Leadership will review and address any raised concerns for the reviewed version.

After passing review, new minor versions are released to production. If any features in the reviewed version are deemed to be significant additions to the specification by the Project Leadership, or if it is a major version change, instead a release candidate version will be released and submitted for GA4GH product approval. After approval, the new version is released to production.

Leadership

Project Leadership

As a product of the Genomic Knowledge Standards (GKS) Work Stream, project leadership is comprised of the Work Stream leadership:

Project Maintainers

Project maintainers are the leads of the GKS Variation Representation working group: