FreeBSD 4.11 Release Process
Introduction
This is a specific schedule for the release of FreeBSD 4.11. For more general information about the release engineering process, please see the Release Engineering section of the web site.
General discussions about the release engineering process or quality assurance issues should be sent to the public freebsd-qa mailing list. MFC requests should be sent to re@FreeBSD.org.
Schedule
| Action | Expected | Actual | Description |
| Reminder announcement | 30 Nov 2004 | 30 Nov 2004 | Release Engineers send announcement email to developers with a rough schedule for the FreeBSD 4.11 release. |
| 4.11-BETA Testing Guide published | -- | -- | A testing guide should be published with information about recent changes and areas of the system that should be thoroughly tested during the pre-release/RC period. |
| Announce the Ports Freeze | -- | 18 Dec 2004 | Someone from portmgr@ should email freebsd-ports@ to set a date for the week long ports freeze and tagging of the ports tree. |
| 4.11-PRERELEASE | 6 Dec 2004 | 6 Dec 2004 | newvers.sh updated. |
| Code freeze begins | 13 Dec 2004 | 13 Dec 2004 | After this date, all commits to the RELENG_4 branch must be approved by re@FreeBSD.org. Certain highly active documentation committers are exempt from this rule for routine man page / release note updates. Heads-up emails should be sent to the developers, as well as stable@ and qa@ lists. |
| RELENG_4_11 branch | 17 Dec 2004 | 17 Dec 2004 | The release branch is created. Update newvers.sh and release.ent on various branches involved. |
| Unfreeze the tree | 17 Dec 2004 | 17 Dec 2004 | Announcement to developers explaining that commits to RELENG_4 no longer require approval. Also note the policy for commits to the RELENG_4_11 branch. |
| 4.11-RC | 17 Dec 2004 | 17 Dec 2004 | newvers.sh and release.ent updated. |
| First release candidate | 20 Dec 2004 | 18 Dec 2004 | The first release candidate for the x86 and Alpha architecture is released. ISO images should be uploaded to ftp-master.FreeBSD.org. A network install directory should be uploaded to ftp-master.FreeBSD.org. The packages/ directory should be a relative symlink, as described in the releng article. When the builds begin send a note to mirror-announce@FreeBSD.org saying a "Normal Release Cycle" is beginning, RC ISOs and install directories will be coming through the next few weeks. |
| Heads up to -stable | 20 Dec 2004 | 18 Dec 2004 | A message should be sent to qa@FreeBSD.org and stable@FreeBSD.org after the first snapshot is uploaded. |
| Second release candidate | 3 Jan 2005 | 3 Jan 2005 | Note: the release date of this candidate depends on the user experience with RC1. |
| Heads up to -stable | 3 Jan 2005 | 3 Jan 2005 | A message should be sent to qa@FreeBSD.org and stable@FreeBSD.org after the second snapshot is uploaded. |
| Third release candidate | 17 Jan 2005 | 17 Jan 2005 | Note: the release date of this candidate depends on the user experience with RC2. |
| Heads up to -stable | 17 Jan 2005 | 17 Jan 2005 | A message should be sent to qa@FreeBSD.org and stable@FreeBSD.org after the third snapshot is uploaded. |
| Ports tree frozen | 30 Dec 2004 | 31 Dec 2004 | Only approved commits will be permitted to the ports/ tree during the freeze. |
| Announce doc/ tree slush | 27 Dec 2004 | 29 Dec 2004 | Notification of the impending doc/ tree slush should be sent to doc@. |
| doc/ tree slush | 14 Jan 2005 | 15 Jan 2005 | Non-essential commits to the en_US.ISO8859-1/ subtree should be delayed from this point until after the doc/ tree tagging, to give translation teams time to synchronize their work. |
| Ports tree tagged | 6 Jan 2005 | 8 Jan 2005 | RELEASE_4_11_0 tag for ports/. |
| Ports tree unfrozen | 7 Jan 2005 | 8 Jan 2005 | After the ports/ tree is tagged, the ports/ tree will be re-opened for commits, but commits made after tagging will not go in 4.11-RELEASE. |
| Final package build starts | 6 Jan 2005 | -- | The ports cluster and pointyhat build final packages. |
| doc/ tree tagged. | 18 Jan 2005 | -- | Version number bumps for doc/ subtree. RELEASE_4_11_0 tag for doc/. doc/ slush ends at this time. |
| Version numbers bumped. | 20 Jan 2005 | 21 Jan 2005 | The files listed here are updated to reflect the fact that this is FreeBSD 4.11. |
| src tree tagged. | 20 Jan 2005 | 21 Jan 2005 | RELENG_4_11_0_RELEASE tag for src/. |
| Final builds. | 20 Jan 2005 | 21 Jan 2005 | Final builds for x86 and Alpha in a pristine environment. |
| Warn mirror-announce@FreeBSD.org | 21 Jan 2005 | 24 Jan 2005 | Heads up email to mirror-announce@FreeBSD.org to give admins time to prepare for the load spike to come. The site administrators have frequently requested advance notice for new ISOs. |
| Upload to ftp-master. | 22 Jan 2005 | 24 Jan 2005 | Release uploaded to ftp-master.FreeBSD.org (packages should have been done before now, otherwise it chokes the mirror sites and propagation of the release bits takes too long) |
| Update man.cgi on the website. | 24 Jan 2005 | 25 Jan 2005 | Make sure the 4.11 manual pages are being displayed by default for the man->web gateway. Also make sure these man pages are pointed to by docs.xml. |
| Announcement | 24 Jan 2005 | 25 Jan 2005 | Announcement sent out after a majority of the mirrors have received the bits. |
| Turn over to the secteam | 2 Feb 2005 | 1 Feb 2005 | RELENG_4_11 branch is handed over to the FreeBSD Security Officer Team in one or two weeks after the announcement. |