---
title: "FreeBSD 8.4 Release Process"
sidenav: download
---

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  <h1>Introduction</h1>

  <p>This is the release schedule for FreeBSD 8.4.  For more
    information about the release engineering process, please see the <a href="../../../releng/index.html" shape="rect">Release Engineering</a> section of the
    web site.</p>

  <p>General discussions about the pending release and known issues should be
    sent to the public
    <a href="mailto:FreeBSD-stable@FreeBSD.org" shape="rect">freebsd-stable</a> mailing list.
    </p>

  <h1>Schedule</h1>

  <table class="tblbasic">
    <tr class="heading">
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Action</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Expected</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Actual</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Description</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Initial release schedule announcement</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">-</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">08&nbsp;February&nbsp;2013</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Release Engineers send announcement email to developers with a
	rough schedule.</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Announce <tt>doc/</tt> tree slush</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">-</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">28&nbsp;February&nbsp;2013</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Notification of the impending <tt>doc/</tt> tree slush
	should be sent to <tt>doc@</tt>.</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Code freeze begins</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">08&nbsp;March&nbsp;2013</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">08&nbsp;March&nbsp;2013</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Release Engineers announce that all further commits to the
	stable/8 branch will require explicit approval.
	Certain blanket approvals will be granted for narrow areas of
	development, documentation improvements, etc.</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">BETA1</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">20&nbsp;March&nbsp;2013</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">22&nbsp;March&nbsp;2013</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">First beta test snapshot.</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1"><tt>doc/</tt> tree slush</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">17&nbsp;March&nbsp;2013</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">17&nbsp;March&nbsp;2013</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Non-essential commits to the <tt>en_US.ISO8859-1/</tt>
	subtree should be delayed from this point until after the
	<tt>doc/</tt> tree tagging, to give translation teams time to
	synchronize their work.</td>
     </tr>

    <tr>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1"><tt>ports/</tt> tree freeze</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">30&nbsp;March&nbsp;2013</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">30&nbsp;March&nbsp;2013</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Only security updates and critical fixes will be allowed
	to the tree during this freeze.</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">releng/8.4 branch</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">18&nbsp;March&nbsp;2013</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">28&nbsp;March&nbsp;2013</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Subversion branch created, propagated to CVS; future
        release engineering proceeds on this branch.</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">RC1</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">30&nbsp;March&nbsp;2013</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">10&nbsp;April&nbsp;2013</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">First release candidate.</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">RC2</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">21&nbsp;April&nbsp;2013</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">22&nbsp;April&nbsp;2013</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Second release candidate.</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">RC3</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">30&nbsp;April&nbsp;2013</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">8&nbsp;May&nbsp;2013</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Third release candidate.</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">RELEASE build</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">02&nbsp;June&nbsp;2013</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">02&nbsp;June&nbsp;2013</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">8.4-RELEASE build.</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">RELEASE announcement</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">07&nbsp;June&nbsp;2013</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">07&nbsp;June&nbsp;2013</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">8.4-RELEASE press release.</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Turn over to the secteam</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">-</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">16&nbsp;June&nbsp;2013</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">releng/8.4 branch is handed over to
	the FreeBSD Security Officer Team in one or two weeks after the
	announcement.</td>
    </tr>
  </table>


  </div>
          <br class="clearboth" />
        </div>
        
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