FreeBSD 13.0 Release Process
Introduction
This is the release schedule for FreeBSD�13.0. 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-current mailing list.
Schedule
During the head freeze, the Release Engineering Team may create ALPHA snapshots to publish for testing purposes. As the frequency and total number of the ALPHA snapshots will depend on the length of time the head branch is frozen, no official schedule is provided.
Announcements regarding the availability of the ALPHA snapshots will be sent to the freebsd-current and freebsd-snapshots mailing lists.
| Action | Expected | Actual | Description |
| Initial release schedule announcement | - | 21�July�2020 | Release Engineers send announcement email to developers with a rough schedule. |
| Release schedule reminder | 3�December�2020 | 3�December�2020 | Release Engineers send reminder announcement e-mail to developers with updated schedule. |
| Code slush begins | 8�January�2021 | 8�January�2021 | Release Engineers announce that all further commits to the head branch will not require explicit approval, however new features should be avoided. Additionally, there can be no changes to the KBI until head is branched to stable/13. |
| stable/13 branch | 22�January�2021 | - | stable/13 branch created; release engineering continues on this branch. |
| releng/13.0 branch | 5�February�2021 | - | releng/13.0 branch created; future release engineering proceeds on this branch. Commits to this branch require explicit approval from the Release Engineers. |
| BETA1 builds begin | 5�February�2021 | - | First beta test snapshot. |
| BETA2 builds begin | 12�February�2021 | - | Second beta test snapshot. |
| BETA3 builds begin�* | 19�February�2021 | - | Third beta test snapshot. |
| RC1 builds begin | 26�February�2021 | - | First release candidate. |
| RC2 builds begin | 5�March�2021 | - | Second release candidate. |
| RC3 builds begin�* | 12�March�2021 | - | Third release candidate. |
| RELEASE builds begin | 19�March�2021 | - | 13.0-RELEASE builds begin. |
| RELEASE announcement | 23�March�2021 | - | 13.0-RELEASE press release. |
| Turn over to the secteam | - | - | releng/13.0 branch is handed over to the FreeBSD�Security Officer Team in one or two weeks after the announcement. |
"*" indicates "as-needed" items.