4.5 Release Schedule

[toma]

Hi,

Short version:
A bit later than usual, the release team finalized the 4.5 release schedule. Find it here:
http://techbase.kde.org/Schedules/KDE4/4.5_Release_Schedule

Long version:
For those interested a bit more info about the changes compared to 4.4 schedule:

This cycle we saw that a beta1 and hard feature freeze at the same date was not optimal. People committing features last minute made packaging beta 1 a nightmare. I've now set the hard feature freeze 1 week before tagging.
 
This cycle we experimented a bit with a message freeze where typo fixes were allowed. We've now made it part of the release schedule by introducing a soft message freeze and a hard message freeze. See techbase page for details. 
 
We also experimented with releasing rc's asap after tagging. This went pretty well, though innocent looking commits broke the tarballs. To prevent that, we've introduced a tagging freeze. This means 24h before tagging no commits other than build fixes should be committed. All other commits are not allowed (including showstoppers). Showstoppers should go through reviewboard, so we can determine if it is indeed a showstopper and if it is safe to commit in relation to all platforms we support.
 
Final problem we had this cycle was changing dependencies until late in the schedule. So we added a dependency freeze at the hard feature freeze time. People should by then know what they want to add as features for that cycle and think about the dependencies they need. During the dependency freeze it is not allowed to introduce new dependencies or raise the version of existing dependencies.

Per request of the bindings crew we introduced a soft and hard API-freeze. Within the soft API freeze it is possible to change the API, but you must cc the bindings people. After the hard API freeze it is not allowed to change the API.

For any questions about above, please mail the release-team mailinglist.

Best,

Tom Albers
Release Team Member