From Fedora Project Wiki

Проект Fedora выпускает новую версию операционной системы примерно каждые 6 месяцев и обеспечивает обновление пакетов (поддержку) для этого выпуска приблизительно 13 месяцев. The Fedora Project releases a new version of Fedora approximately every 6 months and provides updated packages (maintenance) to these releases for approximately 13 months. Что позволяет пользователям "пропустить выпуск" продолжая использовать систему которая продолжает получать обновления.

Расписание разработки

Мы говорим разрабатывается и выпускается приблизительно каждые 6 месяцев потому что, как и все остальное, не всегда все получается как было запланировано.

Расписание для данного выпуска разрабатывается в данный момент, Fedora 40, на собственной странице расписания выпуска. Alpha, Beta, Основной (final) выпуск происходит в 10:00am Eastern US Time, или в 1500UTC или 1400UTC в зависимости от того является ли время летним.

Методология составления расписания

Расписание выпусков Fedora выносится на рассмотрение и одобряется Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo). FESCo отвечает за контроль технического направления Fedora. Основное расписания создается с помощьью ключевых задач перечисленных ниже. Более детально график работ распределяется вокруг этих дат.

Задача/Этап Дата начала Длительность
Планирование и разработка Следующий день после GA предыдущего выпуска Зависит от даты GA и работ над задачами перечисленными ниже
Feature Acceptance Deadline Tuesday--Two weeks before Feature Freeze n/a
Feature Freeze Tuesday--1 week before Branch Freeze Until GA
Branch Freeze Event Tuesday--One week after Feature Freeze. Branch Freeze Policy in effect until GA.
String Freeze Same time as Branch Freeze Software String Freeze Policy in effect until GA.
Alpha Compose Thursday--Two days after Branch Freeze 1 day
Alpha Go/No-Go Meeting Wednesday @ 20:00 E{D,S}T--six days after Alpha Compose n/a
Alpha Release Tuesday--Two weeks after Branch Freeze and 12 days after Alpha Compose Public testing of Alpha lasts 3 weeks
Feature Complete Tuesday--End of Alpha Release Testing n/a
Beta Compose Thursday--Two days after Feature Complete 1 day
Beta Go/No-Go Meeting Wednesday @ 20:00 E{D,S}T--six days after Beta Compose n/a
Beta Release Tuesday--Two weeks after Feature Complete and 12 days after Beta Compose Public testing of Beta lasts 3 Weeks
Final Freeze Tuesday--End of Beta Release Testing In effect until GA
Compose Final RC Thursday--Two days after Final Freeze 1 day
Test Final RC Thursday to Tuesday 6 days
Final Go/No-Go Meeting Tuesday @ 20:00 E{D,S}T after Test Final RC n/a
GA Release Tuesday--Seven days after Test Final RC ends n/a
Maintenance Tuesday--GA release day ~13 Months
End of Life One month after GA of current release + 2 releases n/a

Steps to Construct a New Schedule

This is admittedly an unusual methodology, but it is fairly easy to generate using the the TaskJuggler schedules John Poelstra creates.

  1. Pick GA date (the Tuesday before May 1st or October 31st)
  2. Work backwards using consistent spacing for freezes, composes, and releases for Alpha, Beta, and Final, as described above
  3. Set the feature submission and completion dates working backwards from the Branch Freeze date
  4. The time between the feature submission deadline and the GA of the previous release is the time dedicated to development
    • Development time varies from from release to release based on how when the previous release finished
    • The freeze and testing time (from Branch Freeze until GA) is held constant from release to release

Development Schedule Rationale

Fedora generally develops new releases over a six month period to provide a regular and predictable release schedule. The bi-annual targeted release dates are May Day (May 1st) and Halloween (October 31) making them easy to remember and avoiding significant holiday breaks. Changes to this standard must be approved by the community-elected Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo).

A six month release schedule also follows the precedence of Red Hat Linux (precursor to Fedora). Former Red Hat software engineer Havoc Pennington offers a historical perspective here. GNOME started following a time based release based on the ideas and success of Red Hat Linux and other distributions following Fedora having adopted a similar release cycle. Several other major components, including the Linux kernel, Openoffice.org, Xorg, have started following a time based release schedule. While the exact release schedules vary between these components and other upstream projects, the interactions between these components and Fedora makes a six month time based release schedule a good balance.

Schedule Contingency Planning

If the Alpha, Beta, or Final Go/No Go meetings result in a "No Go" determination, that milestone and subsequent milestones will be pushed back by one week.

One week is the added to the schedule to maintain the practice of releasing on Tuesdays. Tuesdays are the designated release day because they are good days for news coverage and the established day we synchronize our content with the mirrors that carry our releases. Go/No Go meetings receive input from representatives of FESCo, Release Engineering, and Quality Assurance.

Maintenance Schedule

We say maintained for approximately 13 months because the supported period for releases is dependent on the date the release under development goes final. As a result, Release X is supported until one month after the release of Release X+2.

This translates into:

  • Fedora 38 will be maintained until 1 month after the release of Fedora 40.
  • Fedora 39 will be maintained until 1 month after the release of Fedora 41.

Maintenance Schedule Methodology

This methodology is documented in the End of life SOP.

Maintenance Schedule Rationale

Fedora is focused on free and open source software innovations and moves quickly. If you want a distribution that moves slower but has a longer lifecycle, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which is derivative of Fedora or free rebuilds of that such as CentOS might be more suitable for you. Refer to the RHEL page for more details.

Historically, the Fedora Project has found supporting two releases plus Rawhide and the pre-release Branched code to be a manageable work load.

Additional Release Schedule Information