Rationale

Details on the history and discussions that led to this process can be found at Release Versioning Strategy.

Benefits

• No unexpected build failures due to upstream SNAPSHOT changes
• No need for cross-project consolidated “mega builds” to check dependency issues
• Avoids issues with trying to synchronize artifact version numbers across projects
• Improved dev and build cycle time

...

1. Produce SNAPSHOT Java artifact.  Test this in a SNAPSHOT docker image.
2. Produce staging (release candidate) Java artifact.  Test this in a SNAPSHOT docker image.
3. Produce release Java artifact by picking one of the candidates from staging. 
4. Produce STAGING docker image using the release Java artifact.  Use this in E2E test flows.
5. Produce RELEASE docker image by picking one of the candidate STAGING docker images.

References

• https://lists.onap.org/pipermail/onap-discuss/2017-August/003454.html
• https://lists.onap.org/pipermail/onap-discuss/2017-August/003967.html