# 0.17 Release Retrospective

## Metadata

first 0.17 rc was released 161 days after 0.16.0. (5 months & 8 days).

[Release Crew working group](https://discord.com/channels/691052431525675048/1404237363550486751/1404237363550486751) started 2025-08-10. First rc was 1 month later.

|release|date|
|-|-|
|0.16.0 | 2025-04-24 |
|0.16.1 | 2025-05-30 |
|0.17.0-rc.1 | 2025-09-12 |
|0.17.0-rc.2 | 2025-09-21 |
|0.17.0 | 2025-09-30 (docs build [failed](https://docs.rs/crate/bevy/0.17.0) because [nightly broke](https://discord.com/channels/691052431525675048/1404237363550486751/1422681396522123428). Known as early as [2025-08-16](https://discord.com/channels/691052431525675048/1404237363550486751/1406321557055213669)) |
|0.17.1 | 2025-10-01 |

## Topics

### 0.17 release length

> 
> plot [by Pyrious](https://discord.com/channels/691052431525675048/692572690833473578/1415476818462638121). plot assumes 0.17 was released on 2025-09-10. Actual 0.17 release was 20 days later.

> For me it's a bit of a weird case of the 0.17 release cycle took forever so I started working on personal projects while waiting for it and now I often find myself working on those instead of bevy. There's also a bunch of rendering PR that looked pretty good at first glance but are moving the renderer in a direction I'm unsure is the right one so I need a lot of focus time to review those and that kind of time is just hard to come by.
> - [IceSentry (discord)](https://discord.com/channels/691052431525675048/692572690833473578/1443082656194625589)

> i def think the long cadence hurt momentum. i had some things i put down bc we were “about to release” that i’ve just forgotten about.
> - [charlotte (discord)](https://discord.com/channels/691052431525675048/692572690833473578/1443083535102644316)

> We delayed previous release because of the Cart's changes to events. I think it was the right call.
> - [Shatur](https://discord.com/channels/691052431525675048/692572690833473578/1432077010154553410)

> Idk if we necessarily need shorter cycles, but actually meeting the 3 month target more often would be a good start 🤣
> - [NiseVoid](https://discord.com/channels/691052431525675048/692572690833473578/1415475421792829532)

#### "Feature Freeze"

> the long feature freeze in the last cycle definitely seems to have chilled engagement.
> - [nth / miles](https://discord.com/channels/691052431525675048/692572690833473578/1443085266519592960)

> i think the feature freeze wasnt actually real, like it was never actually officially started we just started holding off on bigger changes reflexively, but release just took ages
> - [vero](https://discord.com/channels/691052431525675048/692572690833473578/1443085688718495917)

## Migrations

> All the changes in code are generally covered by a migration guide, but a change in Cargo.toml usually needs to be debugged from various levels of cryptic compiler/runtime errors
> - [IQuick](https://discord.com/channels/691052431525675048/692572690833473578/1438073293922893895)

> I just updated to 0.17, one thing that could improve the migration guides is a section of new features for bevy, I had to compare 0.16 and 0.17 versions docs to find them.
> - [Pronoiai364](https://discord.com/channels/691052431525675048/692572690833473578/1438056303074218045)

## Promising Deadlines

"It's well agreed upon at this point that specific version ships shouldn't be promised like this, but I'm including it here for documentation purposes since it happened in 0.17" - Chris

> BSN: Bevy's Next Generation Scene / UI System: We currently have a working prototype for a much-improved unified Scene / UI system. We plan to land the new bsn! macro and the .bsn asset format in Bevy 0.18.
> - [bevy release post](https://bevy.org/news/bevy-0-17/#what-s-next)

> Fully agreed. We've generally agreed to stop publicly saying when things will land. We shouldn't have done it here
> - [cart](https://discord.com/channels/691052431525675048/692572690833473578/1432162683460784338)

## Bevy Binary Sizes

> I recently noticed just how large even release binaries of bevy games were becoming, and decided to investigate. Turns out about half of it is just strings, and in the process of trying to find out why, i wrote a python script that generates speedscope-compatible files which tries to show the string size per function
> - [laund](https://discord.com/channels/691052431525675048/692572690833473578/1435372922880655370)

> the two recent increases are wayland on by default, and the rust update to 1.90
> - [François](https://discord.com/channels/691052431525675048/692572690833473578/1423199361915158529)

## Compile Times

> just running cargo build --release --example breakout saw almost no improvement on compile time over the last 3 months on main, rather the opposite
> - [François](https://discord.com/channels/691052431525675048/692572690833473578/1412108695726194688)

> for those that think the 0.17 improved compile times... building all the examples in wasm on the 0.16 took 15h19m, on the 0.17 1d9h52m
> - [François](https://discord.com/channels/691052431525675048/1404237363550486751/1422917274741772320)

## An rc Branch

Couple of comments along the lines of "we should fork an rc branch when the rc period starts".

> all I want is for us to start dipping our toe in the water, and having two parallel active branches for the short RC period.
> - [nth / miles](https://discord.com/channels/691052431525675048/692572690833473578/1415503357186936892)