Release Schedule

Releases are scheduled for the first Monday of the second month of each quarter:

• First Monday in February
• First Monday in May
• First Monday in August
• First Monday in November

Release milestones

Note well: Changes must always be committed to trunk and be stable on trunk regression testing before being merged to branches/release.

• One week after prior release ships: branches/release opens for merging all stable changes, including bug fixes, and major upgrades to existing libraries. Breaking changes should be coordinated with libraries affected. New libraries may be added with permission of a release manager.
• Seven weeks before release: branches/release closed for new libraries and breaking changes to existing libraries. Still open for bug fixes and other routine changes to all libraries.
• Six weeks before release: QA checks on snapshot doc builds, inspect status, getting started guide, and install.
• Four weeks before release: branches/release closed for major code changes. Still open for serious problem fixes and docs changes.
• Three weeks before release: branches/release closed for all library changes except when specific permission given by release manager(s).
• Two weeks before release: Beta target date. Further betas and/or release candidates as feedback dictates.

Schedule Rationale

The quarterly schedule is based on mailing list discussions and the results of a straw poll at the BoostCon '08 "Future of Boost" session:

How often do we want to have Boost releases?

4 weeks: 0 votes, 6 weeks: 0 votes, 8 weeks: 10 votes, 12 weeks: 25 votes, 16 weeks or longer: 6 votes

The first day of the second month of the quarter is chosen because the first day of the first month in the January quarter comes after a holiday period in which it is hard to get anything done.

The schedule for release milestones is based on practical issues like the length of time it takes regression tests to cycle, and is adjusted as experience dictates.