FreeBSD 10.3 Release Process
Introduction
This is the release schedule for FreeBSD 10.3. For more information about the release engineering process, please see the Release Engineering section of the web site.
General discussions about the pending release and known issues should be sent to the public freebsd-stable mailing list. MFC requests are no longer being accepted at this time.
Schedule
| Action | Expected | Actual | Description |
| Initial release schedule announcement | - | 6 October 2015 | Release Engineers send announcement email to developers with a rough schedule. |
| Release schedule reminder | 15 November 2015 | 3 December 2015 | Release Engineers send reminder announcement e-mail to developers with updated schedule. |
| Code slush begins | 15 January 2016 | 15 January 2016 | Release Engineers announce that all further commits to the stable/10 branch will not require explicit approval, however new features should be avoided. |
| Code freeze begins | 29 January 2016 | 29 January 2016 | Release Engineers announce that all further commits to the stable/10 branch will require explicit approval. Certain blanket approvals will be granted for narrow areas of development, documentation improvements, etc. |
| BETA1 builds begin | 5 February 2016 | 5 February 2016 | First beta test snapshot. |
| BETA2 builds begin | 12 February 2016 | 12 February 2016 | Second beta test snapshot. |
| BETA3 builds begin * | 26 February 2016 | 26 February 2016 | Third beta test snapshot. |
| releng/10.3 branch | 4 March 2016 | 4 March 2016 | Subversion branch created; future release engineering proceeds on this branch. |
| RC1 builds begin | 4 March 2016 | 4 March 2016 | First release candidate. |
| stable/10 thaw | 6 March 2016 | 6 March 2016 | The code freeze on the stable/10 branch is lifted. |
| RC2 builds begin | 11 March 2016 | 11 March 2016 | Second release candidate. |
| RC3 builds begin * | 18 March 2016 | 18 March 2016 | Third release candidate. |
| RELEASE builds begin | 25 March 2016 | 25 March 2016 | 10.3-RELEASE builds begin. |
| RELEASE announcement | 29 March 2016 | 4 April 2016 | 10.3-RELEASE press release. |
| Turn over to the secteam | - | 27 April 2016 | releng/10.3 branch is handed over to the FreeBSD Security Officer Team in one or two weeks after the announcement. |
"*" indicates "as-needed" items.