xen-release-management doc: More info on schedule

This documents our practice, established in 2018
  https://lists.xen.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2018-07/msg02240.html
et seq

CC: Jürgen Groß <jgross@suse.com>
CC: Paul Durrant <xadimgnik@gmail.com>
CC: Wei Liu <wl@xen.org>
Acked-by: Jan Beulich <jbeulich@suse.com>
Signed-off-by: Ian Jackson <iwj@xenproject.org>

diff --git a/docs/process/xen-release-management.pandoc b/docs/process/xen-release-management.pandoc
index e1aa1eda8f747a5e0845c7deb6a6a28bbb17f3cc..b746c7157d5d3be720ab91525b2455dfdeaab1b9 100644 (file)
--- a/docs/process/xen-release-management.pandoc
+++ b/docs/process/xen-release-management.pandoc
@@ -15,8 +15,10 @@ that they can have an idea what to expect from the Release Manager.
 
 # Xen release cycle
 
-The Xen hypervisor project now releases every 8 months. The actual release date
-depends on a lot of factors.
+The Xen hypervisor project now releases every 8 months.  We aim to
+release in the first half of March/July/November.  These dates have
+been chosen to avoid major holidays and cultural events; if one
+release slips, ideally the subsequent release cycle would be shortened.
 
 We can roughly divide one release into two periods. The development period
 and the freeze period. The former is 6 months long and the latter is about 2
@@ -33,6 +35,12 @@ During freeze period, the tree is closed for new features. Only bug fixes are
 accepted. This period can be shorter or longer than 2 months. If it ends up
 longer than 2 months, it eats into the next development period.
 
+The precise release schedule depends on a lot of factors and needs to
+be set afresh by the Release Manager in each release cycle.  When the
+release is in March, particular consideration should be given to the
+Chinese New Year holiday which will then typically occur during the
+freeze, so the freeze should probably be extended to compensate.
+
 # The different roles in a Xen release
 
 ## Release Manager