[Releasing] Qt 5.12 schedule proposal & proposal for release process change

[Jani Heikkinen]

Hi,

It is time to start freezing Qt 5.12 schedule. We have the same "limitation" as earlier; we should get the release out well before Christmas time. And it seems we can't cut the time needed from FF to final release that much. It seems we aren't necessarily needing those 17 weeks as before but quite close. So here is my proposal for the schedule:

- Soft branching from 'dev' to '5.12' starts 13.8.2018
- Qt 5.12 Feature freeze & finalize branching 20.8.2018
- Final release 29.11.2018

And at this same time I want to propose that we stop delivering alpha or beta releases and just do snapshots instead. Publishing regular snapshots should be done until we are ready for RC. That because I don't see that much need for those anymore. Those are nowadays kind of milestones and in my opinion makes whole process a bit unclear/difficult (we don't have very good definitions for Alpha and Beta releases). So my proposal is:

- We start creating (regular) snapshots for Qt 5.12 as soon as possible & continue to publish those until we are ready for RC.
- When branching from 'dev' to '5.12' is ready FF is in effect. As earlier new features can't go in after this & we are focusing to fix the bugs & maturing the release
- We do API review for release immediately after FF. Discussion about API review process here: http://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/development/2018-March/032338.html
- String freeze will be in effect few weeks (4?) after FF
- We keep release blocker list as earlier and when list is clear we branch from 5.12 -> 5.12.0 and do the first RC from release branch
- If RC isn't good enough for the final release we just fix those remaining issues and do new RC(s) until we are ready for final release

br,
Jani Heikkinen
Release Manager