---
title: "FreeBSD 8.3 Release Process"
sidenav: download
---

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  <h1>Introduction</h1>

  <p>This is the release schedule for FreeBSD 8.3.  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">25&nbsp;January&nbsp;2012</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">Code freeze begins</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">15&nbsp;February&nbsp;2012</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">15&nbsp;February&nbsp;2012</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">17&nbsp;February&nbsp;2012</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">20&nbsp;February&nbsp;2012</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">First beta test snapshot.</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">releng/8.3 branch</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">-</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">3&nbsp;March&nbsp;2012</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">02&nbsp;March&nbsp;2012</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">06&nbsp;March&nbsp;2012</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">First release candidate.</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">RC2</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">16&nbsp;March&nbsp;2012</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">2&nbsp;April&nbsp;2012</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Second release candidate.</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">RELEASE build</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">9&nbsp;April&nbsp;2012</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">9&nbsp;April&nbsp;2012</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">8.3-RELEASE build.</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">RELEASE announcement</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">-</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">18&nbsp;April&nbsp;2012</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">8.3-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">-</td>
      <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">releng/8.3 branch is handed over to
	the FreeBSD Security Officer Team in one or two weeks after the
	announcement.</td>
    </tr>
  </table>

  <h1>Internal Status / TODO</h1>
  <a href="http://wiki.freebsd.org/Releng/8.3TODO" shape="rect">http://wiki.freebsd.org/Releng/8.3TODO</a>


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