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+<!DOCTYPE chapter PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.2//EN"
+"http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.2/docbookx.dtd"
+[<!ENTITY % poky SYSTEM "../poky.ent"> %poky; ] >
+
+<chapter id='ref-release-process'>
+<title>Yocto Project Releases and the Stable Release Process</title>
+
+<para>
+ The Yocto Project release process is predictable and consists of both
+ major and minor (point) releases.
+ This brief chapter provides information on how releases are named, their
+ life cycle, and their stability.
+</para>
+
+<section id='major-and-minor-release-cadence'>
+ <title>Major and Minor Release Cadence</title>
+
+ <para>
+ The Yocto Project delivers major releases (e.g. &DISTRO;) using a six
+ month cadence roughly timed each April and October of the year.
+ Following are examples of some major YP releases with their codenames
+ also shown.
+ See the
+ "<link linkend='major-release-codenames'>Major Release Codenames</link>"
+ section for information on codenames used with major releases.
+ <literallayout class='monospaced'>
+ 2.2 (Morty)
+ 2.1 (Krogoth)
+ 2.0 (Jethro)
+ </literallayout>
+ While the cadence is never perfect, this timescale facilitates
+ regular releases that have strong QA cycles while not overwhelming
+ users with too many new releases.
+ The cadence is predictable and avoids many major holidays in various
+ geographies.
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ The Yocto project delivers minor (point) releases on an unscheduled
+ basis and are usually driven by the accumulation of enough significant
+ fixes or enhancements to the associated major release.
+ Following are some example past point releases:
+ <literallayout class='monospaced'>
+ 2.1.1
+ 2.1.2
+ 2.2.1
+ </literallayout>
+ The point release indicates a point in the major release branch where
+ a full QA cycle and release process validates the content of the new
+ branch.
+ <note>
+ Realize that there can be patches merged onto the stable release
+ branches as and when they become available.
+ </note>
+ </para>
+</section>
+
+<section id='major-release-codenames'>
+ <title>Major Release Codenames</title>
+
+ <para>
+ Each major release receives a codename that identifies the release in
+ the
+ <ulink url='&YOCTO_DOCS_DEV_URL;#yocto-project-repositories'>Yocto Project Source Repositories</ulink>.
+ The concept is that branches of
+ <ulink url='&YOCTO_DOCS_DEV_URL;#metadata'>Metadata</ulink>
+ with the same codename are likely to be compatible and thus
+ work together.
+ <note>
+ Codenames are associated with major releases because a Yocto
+ Project release number (e.g. &DISTRO;) could conflict with
+ a given layer or company versioning scheme.
+ Codenames are unique, interesting, and easily identifiable.
+ </note>
+ Releases are given a nominal release version as well but the codename
+ is used in repositories for this reason.
+ You can find information on Yocto Project releases and codenames at
+ <ulink url='https://wiki.yoctoproject.org/wiki/Releases'></ulink>.
+ </para>
+</section>
+
+<section id='stable-release-process'>
+ <title>Stable Release Process</title>
+
+ <para>
+ Once released, the release enters the stable release process at which
+ time a person is assigned as the maintainer for that stable release.
+ This maintainer monitors activity for the release by investigating
+ and handling nominated patches and backport activity.
+ Only fixes and enhancements that have first been applied on the
+ "master" branch (i.e. the current, in-development branch) are
+ considered for backporting to a stable release.
+ <note>
+ The current Yocto Project policy regarding backporting is to
+ consider bug fixes and security fixes only.
+ Policy dictates that features are not backported to a stable
+ release.
+ This policy means generic recipe version upgrades are unlikely to
+ be accepted for backporting.
+ The exception to this policy occurs when a strong reason exists
+ such as the fix happens to also be the preferred upstream approach.
+ </note>
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Stable release branches have strong maintenance for about a year after
+ their initial release.
+ Should significant issues be found for any release regardless of its
+ age, fixes could be backported to older releases.
+ For issues that are not backported given an older release,
+ Community LTS trees and branches exist where
+ community members share patches for older releases.
+ However, these types of patches do not go through the same release
+ process as do point releases.
+ You can find more information about stable branch maintenance at
+ <ulink url='https://wiki.yoctoproject.org/wiki/Stable_branch_maintenance'></ulink>.
+ </para>
+</section>
+
+</chapter>
+<!--
+vim: expandtab tw=80 ts=4
+-->
projects / thirdparty / openembedded / openembedded-core-contrib.git / commitdiff
