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<!ENTITY base CDATA "../..">
<!ENTITY email 'freebsd-qa'>
<!ENTITY date "$FreeBSD$">
<!ENTITY local.rel "8.3">
<!ENTITY title "FreeBSD &local.rel; Release Process">
<!ENTITY % navinclude.download "INCLUDE">
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&header;

  <h1>Introduction</h1>

  <p>This is the release schedule for FreeBSD &local.rel;.  For more
    information about the release engineering process, please see the <a
    href="&base;/releng/index.html">Release Engineering</a> section of the
    web site.</p>

  <p>General discussions about the pending release and known issues should be
    sent to the public
    <a href="mailto:FreeBSD-stable@FreeBSD.org">freebsd-stable</a> mailing list.
    </p>

  <h1>Schedule</h1>

  <table class="tblbasic">
    <tr class="heading">
      <td>Action</td>
      <td>Expected</td>
      <td>Actual</td>
      <td>Description</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>Initial release schedule announcement</td>
      <td>-</td>
      <td>25&nbsp;January&nbsp;2012</td>
      <td>Release Engineers send announcement email to developers with a
	rough schedule.</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>Code freeze begins</td>
      <td>15&nbsp;February&nbsp;2012</td>
      <td>15&nbsp;February&nbsp;2012</td>
      <td>Release Engineers announce that all further commits to the
	stable/8 branch will require explicit approval.
	Certain blanket approvals will be granted for narrow areas of
	development, documentation improvements, etc.</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>BETA1</td>
      <td>17&nbsp;February&nbsp;2012</td>
      <td>20&nbsp;February&nbsp;2012</td>
      <td>First beta test snapshot.</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>releng/&local.rel; branch</td>
      <td>-</td>
      <td>3&nbsp;March&nbsp;2012</td>
      <td>Subversion branch created, propagated to CVS; future
        release engineering proceeds on this branch.</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>RC1</td>
      <td>02&nbsp;March&nbsp;2012</td>
      <td>06&nbsp;March&nbsp;2012</td>
      <td>First release candidate.</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>RC2</td>
      <td>16&nbsp;March&nbsp;2012</td>
      <td>2&nbsp;April&nbsp;2012</td>
      <td>Second release candidate.</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>RELEASE build</td>
      <td>9&nbsp;April&nbsp;2012</td>
      <td>9&nbsp;April&nbsp;2012</td>
      <td>&local.rel;-RELEASE build.</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>RELEASE announcement</td>
      <td>-</td>
      <td>18&nbsp;April&nbsp;2012</td>
      <td>&local.rel;-RELEASE press release.</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td>Turn over to the secteam</td>
      <td>-</td>
      <td>-</td>
      <td>releng/&local.rel; branch is handed over to
	the FreeBSD Security Officer Team in one or two weeks after the
	announcement.</td>
    </tr>
  </table>

  <p>
  <h1>Internal Status / TODO</h1>
  <a href="http://wiki.freebsd.org/Releng/8.3TODO">http://wiki.freebsd.org/Releng/8.3TODO</a>

  &footer;

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