PL2026 Timeline & Milestones¶
PL2026 Timeline¶
The following Gantt chart illustrates the complete PL2026 development timeline, including management activities, development phases, ALMA testing cycles, and delivery milestones.
gantt
title PL2026 Timeline
dateFormat YYYY-MM-DD
tickInterval 1month
excludes weekends
section Management
%% Stakeholder Planning & Prioritization :active, des1, 2025-10-01, 2025-12-31
%% Team F2F Meeting, Charlottesville, VA :active, 2025-10-13, 5d
Inform ALMA AQUA/Archive of New Products :active, milestone, 2026-05-01, 1d
section Development
New Features, Bugfixes, Refactoring, Testing, Documentation :active, 2026-02-01, 2026-07-01
%% VLASS Feature Dev Complete :active, milestone, 2026-02-01, 1d
VLASS Branch release/2026.1.0 :active, milestone, 2026-03-06, 1d
CASA Branch PL2026 :active, milestone, 2026-02-15, 1d
%% ALMA/VLA Feature Dev Complete :active, milestone, 2026-07-01, 1d
ALMA/VLA Branch release/2026.2.0 :active, milestone, 2026-07-01, 1d
Optimization & Bugfixes :active, 2026-07-01, 2026-07-31
section ALMA Testing
%% Ref. Benchmark (late-PL2025) :active, 2025-10-01, 2025-11-15
Ref. Benchmark (early-PL2026) :active, 2026-02-15, 2026-03-31
Validation Benchmark (PL2026) :active, 2026-06-15, 2026-07-31
TRR1 (pre-E2E) Observations :milestone, 2026-05-14, 1d
TRR1 :test1, 2026-05-14, 2026-05-22
TRR1 Report on Data Reduction :milestone, 2026-05-22, 1d
TRR2 (24h) Observations :milestone, 2026-07-09, 1d
TRR2 :test2, 2026-07-09, 2026-07-23
TRR2 Report on Data Reduction :milestone, 2026-07-23, 1d
Acceptance (48h) Observations :milestone, 2026-08-18, 2d
Acceptance :test3, 2026-08-18, 2026-09-02
Acceptance Report on Data Reduction :milestone, 2026-09-03, 1d
JAO-ARC Validation Test :test4, 2026-09-03, 2026-09-14
section Delivery
%% ALMA Cycle-12 and VLA/SRDP Pipeline (2025.1.0.35, CASA 6.6.6-17-py3.10) :done, crit, milestone, 2025-10-01, 1d
ALMA Cycle-12 and VLA/SRDP Pipeline patch-1 (2025.1.0.36, CASA 6.6.6-18-py3.10) :done, crit, milestone, 2026-03-01, 1d
VLASS Pipeline (2026.1.0.4, CASA 6.7.1-13-py3.10+gpu) :active, crit, milestone, 2026-04-20, 1d
ALMA E2E13 Pre-release :active, crit, milestone, 2026-07-10, 1d
ALMA Cycle-13 and VLA/SRDP Pipeline (2026.2.0, CASA 6.7.4-py3.12) :active, crit, milestone, 2026-08-01, 1d
Key Milestones¶
Delivery Schedule¶
- March 2026 (patch release)
ALMA Cycle-12 and VLA/SRDP Pipeline patch-1
Version: 2025.1.0.37
CASA: 6.6.6-18-py3.10
Status: Completed
- April 2026
VLASS Pipeline
Version: 2026.1.0.4
CASA: 6.7.1-13-py3.10+gpu
Status: Completed
- July 2026
ALMA E2E13 Pre-release
Version: 2026.2.0 (pre-release)
Status: Planned
- August 2026
ALMA Cycle-13 and VLA/SRDP Pipeline
Version: 2026.2.0
CASA: 6.7.4-py3.12
Status: Planned
ALMA Testing Schedule¶
- May 14, 2026
TRR1 (pre-E2E) Observations
- May 22, 2026
TRR1 Report on Data Reduction
- July 9, 2026
TRR2 (24h) Observations
- July 23, 2026
TRR2 Report on Data Reduction
- Aug 18–19, 2026
Acceptance (48h) Observations
- Sep 3, 2026
Acceptance Report on Data Reduction
PL2025/2026 Branching Strategy¶
The branching diagram below illustrates the development workflow across PL2025 and PL2026 cycles, showing the relationship between the main development branch and release branches.
Branch Overview¶
Main Branch: Continuous development with new features and improvements
release/2025.1.0: Stable release for ALMA Cycle-12 (CASA 6.6.6-py3.10)
release/2026.1.0: VLASS-focused release (CASA 6.7.1-py3.10-gpu)
release/2026.2.0: ALMA Cycle-13 and VLA release (CASA 6.7.x-py3.12)
Development Phases¶
Feature Development
New features developed on main branch
Feature branches merged back to main
Regular integration and testing
Release Branching
Release branches created at feature freeze
Stabilization and bug fixes on release branches
Critical fixes cherry-picked back to main
Maintenance
Hotfixes applied to release branches
Important fixes backported as needed
Main branch continues with new development
%%{init: {'logLevel': 'debug', 'theme': 'base', 'gitGraph': {'showBranches': true, 'showCommitLabel': true, 'mainBranchOrder': 1}}}%%
gitGraph
%% === Initial 2025 Development on Main ===
commit id:"feature1"
commit id:"feature2"
commit id:"feature3"
commit id:"bugfix1" tag:"2025.0.2.14" tag:"2025.1.0.0" tag:"2025.1.1.0"
%% --- Branch for 2025.1.0 Release ---
branch "release/2025.1.0 (casa-6.6.6-py3.10)" order: 0
checkout "release/2025.1.0 (casa-6.6.6-py3.10)"
commit id:"bugfix2"
commit id:"bugfix3" tag:"2025.1.0.35" type: HIGHLIGHT
checkout main
%% === Continued Development on Main ===
commit id:"refactor1"
commit id:"refactor2"
branch "feature4" order: 2
checkout "feature4"
commit id:"feature4-pt1"
commit id:"feature4-pt2"
checkout main
cherry-pick id:"bugfix2" tag:"2025.1.1.x"
cherry-pick id:"bugfix3" tag:"2025.1.1.27"
merge "feature4" id:"merge:feature4"
commit id:"feature4"
commit id:"bugfix4" tag:"2025.1.1.10"
commit id:"feature5"
commit id:"feature6" tag:"2026.0.0.0"
%% === VLASS 2026 Development ===
commit id:"feature7"
commit id:"bugfix5" tag:"2026.0.1.0"
commit id:"bugfix6"
commit id:"feature8" tag:"2026.0.1.14" tag:"2026.1.0.0" tag:"2026.1.1.0"
%% --- Branch for 2026.1.0 (VLASS) Release ---
branch "release/2026.1.0 (casa-6.7.1-py3.10-gpu)" order: 3
checkout "release/2026.1.0 (casa-6.7.1-py3.10-gpu)"
commit id:"bugfix7"
commit id:"bugfix8" tag:"2026.1.0.2"
commit id:"hotfix1"
commit id:"hotfix2" tag:"2026.1.0.3" type: HIGHLIGHT
checkout main
%% === ALMA/VLA 2026 Development ===
commit id:"feature9" tag:"2026.1.1.1"
cherry-pick id:"bugfix7" tag:"2026.1.1.2"
commit id:"feature10"
commit id:"feature11" tag:"2026.1.2.0"
commit id:"feature12"
commit id:"bugfix9" tag:"2026.1.3.7" tag:"2026.2.0.0" tag:"2026.3.0.0"
%% --- Branch for 2026.2.0 (ALMA/VLA) Release ---
branch "release/2026.2.0 (casa-6.7.x-py3.12)" order: 4
checkout "release/2026.2.0 (casa-6.7.x-py3.12)"
commit id:"bugfix10"
commit id:"hotfix3" tag:"2026.2.0.5"
checkout main
%% === Post-Release Maintenance & Mainline Dev ===
commit id:"refactor3" tag:"2026.3.0.1"
commit id:"bugfix11" tag:"2026.2.0.2"
cherry-pick id:"hotfix3" tag:"2026.3.0.7"
commit id:"refactor4"
commit id:"refactor5"
checkout "release/2026.2.0 (casa-6.7.x-py3.12)"
cherry-pick id:"bugfix11" tag:"2026.2.0.3"
commit id:"hotfix4" tag:"2026.2.0.4" type: HIGHLIGHT
For version string format, see Pipeline Versioning.