Initial RC article

Author: jemgillam

src/news/2025-10-28-release-candidate.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: "PostGraphile and Grafast release candidate!"
+date: 2025-10-28T12:00:00Z
+path: /news/20251028-release-candidate/
+thumbnail: /images/news/thank-you.svg
+thumbnailAlt: "The Grafast logo"
+tags: announcements, releases, grafast, postgraphile
+noToc: false
+
+summary:
+  "After over 100 releases, PostGraphile V5 and Grafast V1 have finally reached
+  release candidate status!🎉 Assuming no issues are found, this software, these
+  APIs, are what will make up the final release. The runtime is ready and many
+  of you are already using it in production. Try it out and tell us where the
+  gaps in documentation and types are, and maybe help fill them!"
+---
+
+_Announced 2025-10-28 by the Graphile Team_
+
+<p class='intro'>
+  After over 100 releases, PostGraphile V5 and Grafast V1 have finally reached
+  release candidate status!🎉 Assuming no issues are found, this software, these
+  APIs, are what will make up the final release. The runtime is ready and many
+  of you are already using it in production, but the types and docs are a little behind. 
+  Try it out and tell us where the gaps are, and maybe help fill them!
+</p>
+
+### Five years in the making, PostGraphile V5 raises the bar again
+
+After a couple false starts, in February 2020 we kicked off the journey that
+would ultimately become PostGraphile V5 and the Gra*fast* planning and execution
+engine. Since January 2023 we have shipped 38 pre-alpha, 20 alpha, and 49 beta
+releases. Every stage refined the ergonomics, uncovered tricky edge cases, and
+ultimately solved the four Gra*fast* epics that blocked a stable release:
+
+- ✅ “Everything is batched” but “unary” values (variables, context, etc) are
+  treated as a special case.
+- ✅ Early termination of field execution with a `null` now has first-class
+  support.
+- ✅ Plan-time “peeking” at runtime values is now forbidden, improving plan
+  re-use.
+- ✅ The exponential polymorphic branching hazard is now eradicated by
+  converging before branching again.
+
+The result is a platform that is faster, more expressive, more configurable, and
+easier to extend than anything we have shipped before.
+
+### Why this is still a release candidate
+
+We do not anticipate breaking changes to the runtime behaviour. Numerous teams
+have already trusted beta builds in production for over a year and the feedback
+has been excellent. The remaining work is polish: verifying the docs, catching
+stray rough edges, and ensuring that migration guidance reflects the software as
+it exists today.
+
+You can expect the occasional breaking change in TypeScript typings as we close
+gaps and fix inaccuracies. The runtime APIs will remain compatible, but you may
+need to adjust type annotations while we tighten things up. Likewise, some TSDoc
+comments are behind reality; we will update them alongside the docs.
+
+If you bump into rough edges while trying V5, please raise an issue in the
+[Crystal repo](https://github.com/graphile/crystal) so we can address it before
+the final release.
+
+### Thinking in plans
+
+For those using Gra*fast* outside of PostGraphile, now is the perfect moment to
+validate that the “[plans as dataflow](https://grafast.com/grafast/flow)”
+approach clicks for you: do you understand the separation of “plan-time” and
+“execution-time”? Can you see how principled communication between the steps
+allows for optimization without needing to revisit plan resolvers?
+
+If you don’t understand it, that’s likely a failing of our documentation! Help
+us improve our explanations by sharing your feedback (whether confusion and
+frustration or success and praise!) in our
+[Discord](https://discord.gg/graphile) or with GitHub issues and pull requests!
+
+### Read more
+
+Visit the announcement on
+[PostGraphile.org](https://postgraphile.org/news/2025-10-28-v5-release-candidate)
+for specific news about PostGraphile V5 and how to get the release candidate up
+and running.
+
+Visit the announcement on
+[Grafast.org](https://grafast.org/news/2025-10-28-grafast-v1-release-candidate)
+for news about Gra*fast* V1 - the new GraphQL planning and execution engine
+which powers PostGraphile under-the-hood.
+
+### Thank you Sponsors
+
+Gra*fast* and PostGraphile are crowd-funded open-source software, they rely on
+crowd-sourced funding from individuals and companies to keep advancing.
+
+If your company benefits from Gra*fast*, PostGraphile or the wider Graphile
+suite, you should consider asking them to fund our work. By significantly
+reducing the amount of work needed to achieve business goals and reducing
+running costs, Graphile’s software results in huge time and money savings for
+users. We encourage companies to contribute a portion of these savings back,
+enabling the projects to advance more rapidly, and result in even greater
+savings for your company.
+[Find out more about sponsorship here on our website](/sponsor/).
+
+<div class="flex flex-wrap justify-around">
+<img alt="Thanks!" src="/images/news/thank-you.svg" style="max-height: 300px" />
+</div>