dE . posted on Mon, 02 Apr 2012 05:20:20 +0530 as excerpted:
> Is there any definitive release cycle? Like Debian has
> stable/unstable/testing etc... branches and has general rules and
> regulation on what has to be done at what time, regardless of the
> current release?
>
> Or is it that the rules and regulations change as per the release?
FWIW, the release schedules along with feature plans and status, for all
of kde4 since 4.1 (4.0 has a schedule page listed, but there's nothing
there, but there's additional docs for 4.0-4.4, 4.5+ only have the two),
can be found here:
http://techbase.kde.org/Schedules
The following describes and summarizes the cyclical release timing
information based on the schedules found at that link. (Hint, it might
be worth bookmarking it! =:^)
Since kde 4.0 (or at least 4.1, IIRC 4.0 also but I can't confirm due to
the empty 4.0 schedule page, above, and didn't cross-check elsewhere), kde
has had a six-month-feature/one-month-bugfix cycle.
Feature releases (4.x, currently 4.8) are roughly every six months, tho
under extenuating circumstances they can slip a few days.
Within the six-month feature release cycle, there's a one-month bugfix
release cycle as well, 4.x.y. Early in 4.x, there tended to be five such
bugfix releases after the feature release for six total, 4.x.0 thru
4.x.5, but lately, they've been getting good enough at it that they only
run 4.x.0 thru 4.x.4, skipping the last one and focusing on a more stable
initial next feature release instead.
Pre-feature-release, the first scheduled event is the soft feature
freeze, about release minus three months (R-3M). Two weeks later
(so ~R-2.5M) there's a hard-feature freeze, followed a week later by the
beta1 tagging and a week after that by the beta1 prerelease, which
therefore occurs about R-2M. Two weeks later (~R-1.5M) comes beta2
prerelease,
rc1 follows at about R-5W (weeks), and rc2 at ~R-3W.
Thus, 4.x.3 occurs at about the same time as 4.x+1's soft feature freeze,
at about the half-way point between feature releases. 4.8.3 release is
scheduled for May 1, 4.9's soft feature freeze for May 3.
Similarly, 4.x.4 and beta1 occur at about the same time, roughly a month
later, four months into a feature release, two before the next one.
4.8.4 release is scheduled for June 5, 4.9 beta1 prerelease for May 30.
rc1 follows the same pattern, roughly the same time as 4.x-1.5 if it
appears, five months into the current feature release, about a month
(five weeks for the rc) before the next one. But as mentioned, they're
skipping the 4.x.5 versions a lot of the time now, allowing two months of
solid focus on the upcoming feature release.
4.9 rc1 prerelease is scheduled for June 27, 4.9.0 feature release for
August 1, about five weeks later, two weeks each for the rcs, plus a week
for tagging/testing/packaging.
For all public releases and pre-releases, so beta, rc, feature and bugfix
releases, all of them, tagging occurs about a week before public release
(but only a day before rc releases due to the compressed timeframe at
that point), and private preliminary tarballs are made available to the
various distro kde maintainers for testing and building, so if they're
fast enough, they can have binary packages up and linked in kde's public
release coverage. However, these preliminary tarballs are subject to
last-minute changes should any kinks be found, and often there are such
changes for one or two of the tarballs before the final release
announcements, including checksums, etc. (Depending on the detail of
your distro kde maintainer's changelogs, you may be able to see which
preliminary tarballs changed based on the checksum updates.)
Again based on the above, the coming dates of most (user viewpoint)
interest are:
April 3: 4.8.2 release THIS WEEK! =:^)
May 1: 4.8.3 release
May 3: first 4.9 developer deadline, soft feature freeze
May 30: 4.9 beta1 prerelease
June 5: 4.8.4 release, final scheduled 4.8
June 13: 4.9 beta2 prerelease
June 27: 4.9 rc1 prerelease
July 11: 4.9 rc2 prerelease
August 1: 4.9.0 release
--
Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
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