On Thu, Sep 01, 2016 at 12:18:10PM +0100, Peter Maydell wrote:
> I know 2.7 isn't quite out the door yet, but I figured we should
> kick off the discussion of 2.8's schedule. At the QEMU Summit there
> was some discussion on how we're doing with releases, and I think
> the consensus view was that we should try to cut down the softfreeze
> period and also be stricter about (a) making sure pull requests get
> in in a timely way before rc0 and (b) we don't take new features
> during softfreeze.
> 
> (I'm not entirely sure I have those right, and in any case they're
> not pre-decided conclusions, so corrections and further opinion
> welcome.)
> 
> As a strawman, here's a timetable which results in a final
> release in December at the usual sort of time (ie allowing for
> the usual slippage without it hitting the holiday season):
> 
> 
> 2016-10-25 softfreeze, if you think we need 3 weeks, or:
> 2016-11-01 if you think we can do a 2 week softfreeze
> 2016-11-08 deadline for getting pull requests on list before hardfreeze?
> 2016-11-15 rc0 (start of hardfreeze)
> 2016-11-22 rc1
> 2016-11-29 rc2
> 2016-12-06 rc3
> 2016-12-13 final v2.8.0

I suggest we do the schedule above with a firm hardfreeze deadline where
no more feature pull requests are allowed.  This means a 2 week
softfreeze and time before -rc0 for the maintainer to merge and test
pull requests:

2016-10-25 softfreeze
2016-11-08 hardfreeze
2016-11-15 rc0
2016-11-22 rc1
2016-11-29 rc2
2016-12-06 rc3
2016-12-13 final v2.8.0