We have decided to change the Defold release process in 2020. The following changes will be made:
- Release cycle will change from every two weeks to every four weeks. The release process, while fairly streamlined, still takes up precious development time. By changing from two to four weeks we reduce the overall time spent on release preparations and give us a bit more time to work on new features.
- We will have a public two week beta period where you are invited to help us test the new release. The extended beta period will give us more time to catch regressions and problems with new features. We’d like to find a handful of users in our community willing to use the beta when developing and testing their games. Would you like to help out? Please let us know here or in a PM!
- We will keep updated Alpha and Beta release notes available on the forum. This will give you guys better insights into upcoming changes and it gives you a chance to test the absolute bleeding edge stuff that will end up in the next beta and release.
We have already started working this way, but with the Christmas holidays coming we’ll start with the new release process for real in January. Our current plan is to release a beta of 1.2.165 by the end of next week and keep it in beta over the holidays. The release of 1.2.165 will happen in the first or second week of January.
The alpha/beta release notes for 1.2.165 can be found here: Upcoming 1.2.165 release notes
if the release process is indeed taking too much time, then your solution is rightful, it clearly should conclude in more time for development and less time for process, administration and testing 
