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 haven't been particularly happy with the 2.7 release process, which has dragged on a lot due to some combination of: * late-breaking security issues * KVM Forum timing (we were optimistic about getting the release out beforehand and didn't manage it) * a bunch of bugs either discovered late or without patches on list and in tree very quickly I'm not sure how best to improve things though. Side note: I will not be around for most of November so Stefan has kindly agreed to manage the merging and tagging work this time around. thanks -- PMM
