Canary release

Imagine you made a cool new toy for all your friends to play with. But before you give it to everyone, you want to make sure it works perfectly and doesn't cause any problems. So, instead of giving it to all your friends at once, you give it to just one friend first. This friend is your little "canary."

The canary gets to play with the toy and see how it works. If there are any issues or problems, the canary can give you feedback and tell you what needs to be fixed. You can then make improvements based on their feedback, so the toy becomes even better.

Once you have made the necessary improvements, you can give the toy to a few more friends, who also act as canaries. They get to play with the improved toy and give you their feedback. You use their feedback to fix any remaining problems or make further improvements.

This process continues, slowly adding more friends as canaries, until you are confident that the toy is working perfectly and there are no more issues. At this point, you can give the toy to all your friends, knowing that it will work great and they will have lots of fun playing with it.

In software development, a canary release works in a similar way. Instead of giving a new version of a software or application to all the users at once, it is first released to a small group of users, called canaries. These canaries use the software and provide feedback on any problems or bugs they encounter.

Based on the feedback received from the canaries, the developers can make necessary improvements and fixes to the software. Once they are confident that the issues have been resolved, the software can be released to a larger group of users, and eventually to everyone.

This incremental release approach helps to ensure that any problems or bugs are identified and fixed early on, before they affect a large number of users. It also allows for gathering valuable feedback from real users, which can help in making the software better overall.

So, just like giving the toy to your canary friends first, a canary release is a way to slowly release and improve software to ensure it works well and doesn't cause any problems for everyone who uses it.