As mentioned in the freeze process proposal for this release, we will have a new 'Hard Freeze' step to give us better quality control for the run-up to the Release Phase.
During the Hard Freeze, we all refrain from committing to CVS. Instead, necessary changes should be posted to the patch tracker. A couple people -- the "Change Control Team" -- have the responsibility to vet and apply patches if they're absolutely necessary.
For this release, I'd like to propose Mental and Bulia as the Change Control Team, and that we rotate who is on this team in future releases.
Because the Inkscape developers are trustworthy, I think we can rely on the honor system, rather than turning off everyone's access. If there happened to be any abuse, it can be handled on a case-by-case basis.
Here's how the process would work:
=== Hard Freeze Phase ===
0. The Hard Freeze will be announced once all of the Must Fix bugs have been addressed and the codebase passes its distcheck and tests. Nobody except Change Control commits into the release tree after this point - only to the patch tracker.
1. The Change Control Team reviews the status of the application and of recent bug fixes. They request patches for abnormalities found.
2. Only patches for key bug fixes, documentation, packaging, and translations will be taken at this point.
3. Once the Change Control Team is satisfied, they announce that the codebase is Good For Release, and branch the release candidate. (See CreatingDists.) This marks the end of the Hard Freeze phase.
=== Release Phase ===
4. The Release Team creates the distribution source tarball package, and posts the GPG-signed tarball(s).
5. Packagers begin creating the 0.XX.0-1 packages of this release for their platforms.
6. The Release Phase should be treated like a Feature Freeze; everyone can resume committing to CVS, but should limit themselves to bug fixing, in case there are serious issues that will require making a new point release.
7. If issues are discovered during this packaging process, the Change Control Team will review the changes and their fixes and choose:
a) Ignore the issue for this release. b) Put up an optional package for packagers to use as needed. The packagers increment their patch-number (i.e. 0.XX.0-1) c) Declare a minor-rev increase (i.e. 0.XX.1). All packages must be regenerated in this case.
8. Once a suitable number of working, tested packages have been posted to the file tracker, the Release Team announces that the codebase is Released.
9. Finally, announcements about the release are made. This also marks the end of the Release Freeze.
10. Normal development resumes.
Bryce