Re: Draft GNOME 1.4 schedule

[Maciej Stachowiak <mjs eazel com>]

The GNOME 1.4 Release Team came up with this release timetable which
was approved by the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors. Please note
the open issues section at the end.

In particular, I would appreciate feedback from maintianers on the
feasibility of the library freeze date. The freeze means basically you
create a 1.4 branch for anything that doesn't already have a stable
branch, and add only bug fixes, no more API changes or feature
additions.

Since the major new feature and major release risk factor is Nautilus,
I have included numerous Nautilus dates for information
purposes. Eazel management has agreed to release these dates and is
strongly committed to making them.

The GNOME dates are, as usual, subject to the bogon flux; the release
team will do our best to meet them but a lot depends on many
maintainers working togehter, so do not plan your product based on
this date.

I will check this file in as "timetable" in the "releng" module in
gnome cvs shortly.


1/29  Nautilus PR3 release

2/1   Library freeze date - create 1.4 branches, bug fix only mode
2/8   Freeze date for everything else - bug fix only mode, branch as needed
2/8   Drop dead date for packages - any proposed new packages which are
      not ready will be dropped)
2/15  Package due date for GNOME 1.4 Beta 1 (maintainers must upload 
                                             packages by this date)
2/17  GNOME 1.4 Beta 1 (based on Nautilus PR3)

2/23  Nautilus 1.0 freeze 

2/26  Nautilus release candidate tarballs released (0.9 or 0.99 or
                                     something - done barring final Eazel 
                                     and community QA)
2/26  GNOME 1.4 Beta 2 package due date
2/28  GNOME 1.4 Beta 2 (based on Nautilus release candidate)

3/5   Nautilus 1.0 release

3/6   GNOME 1.4 beta 3 package due date
3/8   GNOME 1.4 Beta 3 (based on Nautilus 1.0)
3/8   Hard freeze except for docs and translations - code changes may
      only go in for critical bugs as reviewed by Release Team (or the
      GNOME Foundation board for hard cases).

3/16  GNOME 1.4 Release Candidate 1 package due date
3/18  GNOME 1.4 Release Candidate 1
3/18  Hard freeze for everything, including docs and translations -
      code changes may only go in for critical bugs as reviewed by
      Release Team and GNOME Foundation board.

3/25  GNOME 1.4 Final package due date - but no changes expected from RC1
3/27  GNOME 1.4 Final


Notes:

* Don Melton, Director of Client Engineering at Eazel sat in on the
  releng meeting and confirms the Nautilus dates.
* Jacob said he would make gnome-core releases in time for each beta
* George fixed gdm2 and is working on xalf and grdb integration
* This schedule is aggressive but on the edge of feasible. In the
  worst case, by aiming for this schedule we will be doing fairly well
  after slippage.
* We will be tracking open release issues in the bugzilla.gnome.org
  under the "GNOME 1.4 Release Engineering" product.

Open issues:
 
* Library freeze date must be checked with maintainers
* Gtk release target dates (to raise with Owen)
* new control-center release (boc can likely take care of it)
* relevant bonobo dates, if any (to raise w/ Miguel and Michael)
* PR dates - due dates for draft and final press releases, etc (Leslie
  and Greg working on these)
* Anything else I'm missing? Please let me know!