QtReleasing

Qt 5 releasing gearbox

We are targeting to release new minor Qt release twice/year and some patch releases between those minor ones. Target is to release minor releases on April and October. Patch releases are done pretty much need bases: Those can be done immediately when some brown paper bag issue is found & fixed (e.g. security fix) or when there is enough critical issues fixed for next Patch release.

Most of releasing related issues are decided in virtual release team meetings. Meetings are led by release manager and everyone can join to those meetings by informing willingness to release manager. Meetings are held in irc, #qt-releases channel. To get invitation to these meetings please sent request to the release manager.

Qt 5 release phases

Patch release doesn't have official release phases; It is released when needed and when quality is good enough.

Minor releases are going through following phases:

Phase	Timing
Feature freeze	T-17 weeks
Alpha release	T-13 weeks
Beta release	T-8 weeks
Soft string freeze	T-6 weeks
Hard string freeze	T-5 weeks
Release candidate	T-2 weeks
Final release	T

Timings are more or less suggestive and will be fine-tuned for each release to take care of holiday seasons etc.

Qt releases

In the table below is high level schedule. Detailed schedule & patch releases can be found from subpages, links in the each release.

Qt release	Planned schedule	Actual schedule
Qt 5.1 Release	May 2013	July 2013
Qt 5.2 Release	Nov 2013	Dec 2013
Qt 5.3 Release	Apr 2014	May 2014
Qt 5.4 Release	Oct 2014	Dec 2014
Qt 5.5 Release	Apr 2015	July 2015
Qt 5.6 Release	Dec 2015	March 2016
Qt 5.7 Release	May 2016	June 2016
Qt 5.8 Release	Dec 2016	Jan 2017
Qt 5.9 Release	May 2017	May 2017
Qt 5.10 Release	Nov 2017	<tbs>
Qt 5.11 Release	May 2018	<tbs>

Branches & Qt versions

There is few different development branches in Qt 5: Development branch & feature branches (like 5.4, 5.3)

Development branch has content targeted to next minor release (Qt 5.x). After feature freeze of Qt 5.x code is branched from development branch to 5.x and work for that minor release continues in that new branch. Development branch is again for new minor release Qt 5.(x+1).

Feature branches (5.x) has content for next release (minor or patch). Alpha and beta releases are done from feature branch. Release branch(5.x.y) is created after (last) beta release, near release candidate phase. After branching work for release candidate & final release continues in release branch and feature branch is for next patch release.

Release branch is for finalizing the release. All final releases are done from release branch. Only really important error corrections are allowed to be integrated to release branch. Release team is approving all changes coming in to release branch.

More information about branches from Branch-Guidelines