[python-committers] IMPORTANT: 3.7.0b1 and feature code cutoff 2018-01-29

[Ned Deily]

Happy mid-winter (northern hemisphere) or -summer (southern)!

The time has come to finish feature development for Python 3.7.  As
previously announced, this coming Monday marks the end of the alpha
phase of the release cycle and the beginning of the beta phase.  Up
through the alpha phase, there has been unrestricted feature
development phase; that ends as of beta 1.  All feature code for
3.7.0 must be checked in by the b1 cutoff on end-of-day Monday
(unless you have contacted me and we have agreed on an 
extension).

As was done during the 3.6 release cycle, we will create the 3.7 
branch at b1 time.  During the beta phase, the emphasis is on fixes 
for new features, fixes for all categories of bugs and regressions, 
and documentation fixes/updates.  I will send out specific information 
for core committers next week after the creation of the b1 tag and the 
3.7 branch.

Beta releases are intended to give the wider community the opportunity 
to test new features and bug fixes and to prepare their projects to 
support the new feature release.  We strongly encourage maintainers of 
third-party Python projects to test with 3.7 during the beta phase and 
report issues found to bugs.python.org as soon as possible.  While the 
release will be feature complete entering the beta phase, it is 
possible that features may be modified or, in rare cases, deleted up 
until the start of the release candidate phase.  Our goal is have no 
changes after rc1.  To achieve that, it will be extremely important to 
get as much exposure for 3.7 as possible during the beta phase.

Also, during the 3.6.0 release cycle, the question of ABI stability 
during the final (e.g. beta and release candidate) phases of the 
release came up.  Last-minute changes put a burden on our and our 
downstream users testing efforts and adds risk to the release.  
Therefore, as was proposed then, we will strive to have no ABI changes 
after beta 3.  More details forthcoming.

To recap:

2018-01-29 ~23:59 Anywhere on Earth (UTC-12:00):
    code snapshot for 3.7.0 beta 1 (feature code freeze, no new
    features)

2019-01-30:
    3.7 branch opens for 3.7.0
    feature development continues on master branch, now for 3.8.0

2018-01-30 to 2018-05-21:
    3.7.0 beta phase (bug, regression, and doc fixes, no new features)

2018-03-26:
    3.7.0 beta 3 (3.7.0 ABI freeze)

2018-05-21:
    3.7.0 release candidate 1 (3.7.0 code freeze)

2018-06-15:
    3.7.0 release (3.7.0rc1 plus, if necessary, any dire emergency
    fixes)

~2019-12 tentative (3.7.0 release + 18 months):
    3.8.0 release (details TBD)


Thank you all for your great efforts so far on 3.7; it should be
another great release!

--Ned

https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0537/

--
  Ned Deily
  nad at python.org -- []