FreeBSD 10.3 Release Process

Action

Expected

Actual

Description

Initial release schedule announcement

-

6 October 2015

Release Engineers send announcement email to developers with a rough schedule.

Release schedule reminder

15 November 2015

3 December 2015

Release Engineers send reminder announcement e-mail to developers with updated schedule.

Code slush begins

15 January 2016

15 January 2016

Release Engineers announce that all further commits to the stable/10 branch will not require explicit approval, however new features should be avoided.

Code freeze begins

29 January 2016

29 January 2016

Release Engineers announce that all further commits to the stable/10 branch will require explicit approval. Certain blanket approvals will be granted for narrow areas of development, documentation improvements, etc.

BETA1 builds begin

5 February 2016

5 February 2016

First beta test snapshot.

BETA2 builds begin

12 February 2016

12 February 2016

Second beta test snapshot.

BETA3 builds begin *

26 February 2016

26 February 2016

Third beta test snapshot.

releng/10.3 branch

4 March 2016

4 March 2016

Subversion branch created; future release engineering proceeds on this branch.

RC1 builds begin

4 March 2016

4 March 2016

First release candidate.

stable/10 thaw

6 March 2016

6 March 2016

The code freeze on the stable/10 branch is lifted.

RC2 builds begin

11 March 2016

11 March 2016

Second release candidate.

RC3 builds begin *

18 March 2016

18 March 2016

Third release candidate.

RELEASE builds begin

25 March 2016

25 March 2016

10.3-RELEASE builds begin.

RELEASE announcement

29 March 2016

4 April 2016

10.3-RELEASE press release.

Turn over to the secteam

-

27 April 2016

releng/10.3 branch is handed over to the FreeBSD Security Officer Team in one or two weeks after the announcement.