Bug 15979

Summary: Document the development phases (M1-4, feature freeze, ...)
Product: [Documentation] Development Manual Reporter: Yoann Congal <yoann.congal>
Component: developmentAssignee: Antonin Godard <antonin.godard>
Status: RESOLVED FIXED QA Contact:
Severity: minor    
Priority: Medium+ CC: randy.macleod, sjolley.yp.pm
Version: unspecified   
Target Milestone: 6.0 M2   
Hardware: x86   
OS: Multiple   
Whiteboard:
OS type for building Yocto: --- Type of Regression: ---
Verified: Documentation change: Yes (doc changes required)

Description Yoann Congal 2025-09-25 08:33:05 UTC 
The fact that there is a feature freeze before release is not obvious in the docs.
Documenting that :
* may help occasional contributor understand why their patch is not merged
* provide a reference to explain to a contributor to wait for the next release cycle

The most approaching doc I could find is https://docs.yoctoproject.org/test-manual/test-process.html#release-builds but just mention "usually four milestones" and not "feature freeze".
Comment 1 Antonin Godard 2025-09-25 09:00:49 UTC 
Agreed, I think it could be part of https://docs.yoctoproject.org/ref-manual/release-process.html.

Just to be sure I understand correctly:

- Each release is a 6-month cycle.
- Each release has four milestone. There is no definitive date on when milestones are released.
- After M3, we enter feature freeze, meaning new features are not introduced until after the _next_ release (and so not even after M4).

I'm not sure to grasp what the difference between M4 and the new tagged release is. Is the time between M4 and the tagged release used for QA/testing?

If that is true, does the following apply?

- There is no definitive date on when a new release is tagged. It depends on whether every tests have passed QA.
Comment 2 Antonin Godard 2026-01-05 16:08:03 UTC 
I've sent a patch to document this:
https://lore.kernel.org/r/20260105-release-process-v1-1-6b84d409718c@bootlin.com