[GHC DevOps Group] New release process

[Manuel M T Chakravarty]

One of the stated goals of our effort is to move to calendar-based 6-monthly releases of GHC. To this end, I had a conversation with Ben a while ago, where discussed the following schedule for v6.4 & v6.6:

  6.4 release planned for Feb
  - Branch in Nov

  6.6 release ought to then be in Aug
  - Branch in May

  Pre-release schedule
  - On cutting the branch, alpha release
  - Then, a beta every two weeks until 4 weeks before the targeted release date
  - RC1 four weeks before the targeted release date
  - RC2 two weeks before the targeted release date

For this to be realistic, we do need to have the automatic release artefact building in place by the time of cutting the v6.4 branch. This doesn’t leave us much time to get this up and running.

Ben, this also requires us to settle 

  https://github.com/snowleopard/hadrian/issues/440 <https://github.com/snowleopard/hadrian/issues/440>

soon.

We need to discuss a policy of what can go into the release branch after it has been cut. IMHO, it cannot be major features, but only small changes and fixes until RC1. Then, only fixes.

What do you all think?

Cheers,
Manuel

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