docs/process/xen-release-management: Lesson to learn

The 4.10 release preparation was significantly more hairy than ideal.
(We seem to have a good overall outcome despite, rather than because
of, our approach.)

This is the second time (at least) that we have come close to failure
by committing to a release date before the exact code to be released
is known and has been made and tested.

Evidently our docs makes it insufficiently clear not to do that.

CC: Julien Grall <julien.grall@arm.com>
Acked-by: Juergen Gross <jgross@suse.com>
Acked-by: Jan Beulich <jbeulich@suse.com>
Acked-by: Lars Kurth <lars.kurth@citrix.com>
Signed-off-by: Ian Jackson <Ian.Jackson@eu.citrix.com>

diff --git a/docs/process/xen-release-management.pandoc b/docs/process/xen-release-management.pandoc
index 2ff0665b999ecae6c7aea5539f934d3edfb70279..d7fdca5656452fd6f4ee643beb6fe0f09a63463e 100644 (file)
--- a/docs/process/xen-release-management.pandoc
+++ b/docs/process/xen-release-management.pandoc
@@ -211,7 +211,12 @@ https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Category:Xen_4.9
     Ask them to dry-run their checklist and confirm everything is OK. If not,
     arrange another RC and restart this checklist.
 
-7. Give PR Personnel final go-ahead, and instruct Release Technician to make
+7. Do not commit to a release date until
+
+    * The exact xen.git commit id to be released is known.
+    * That commit id has been satisfactorily tested.
+
+8. Give PR Personnel final go-ahead, and instruct Release Technician to make
 release deliverables (tags and tarballs - will usually be in place the day
 before the release). At this point, PR collateral will be sent to reporters
 (typically 2-3 working days before the release date) and we cannot undo
@@ -219,7 +224,7 @@ publications without questions being asked and risk of negative PR. It is
 acceptable to make a xen-devel@ announcement *before* the PR release date
 (blog, xen-announce@, press release).
 
-8. Make the announcement on various mailing list, publish the blog post.
+9. Make the announcement on various mailing list, publish the blog post.
 
 Allow for contingencies. It is not uncommon that some last minute (security or
 not) bugs are discovered. To provide a fix takes time, the test of the fix