Release schedule for 2.4.4 and beyond

[Toshio Kuratomi]

Greetings all,

I just wanted to say a brief word about my intention as the 2.4.x
Ansible Release Manager forgetting 2.4.4 out the door and any further
2.4.x releases after that.

Release Schedule for 2.4.4
==========================

My plan is for 2.4.4 to be released shortly after 2.5.0 final is
released. To get us on the right track for that, I'll be releasing
2.4.4 beta1 when 2.5.0-rc1 is released. My plan is for just one beta
and then begin rc's for 2.4.4 as there are relatively fewer changes
hitting the 2.4 tree now. Here's the tentative release schedule:

February 21: 2.4.4-beta1
March 28: 2.4.4-rc1

2.4.4 final could potentially land as early as March 7th but I'll
definitely wait until 2.5.0 final is out before shipping 2.4.4 final.
There's enough code in common that it just makes sense to wait until
all of the bugs we're going to consider blockers for 2.5.0 are taken
care of before releasing 2.4.4 (in case any of them need backporting
to 2.4.4)

Beyond 2.4.4
============

So far, the 2.4.x release series has had a series of scheduled
releases. 2.4.1 and 2.4.2 were each scheduled for one month after the
previous releases. 2.4.3 was scheduled for two months after its
predecessor but slipped a few extra weeks. 2.4.4 will be the last of
these scheduled
releases. After it is released we'll continue to accumulate important
bugfixes in the stable-2.4 branch but will only be cutting a 2.4.5 if
there's any critical or security bugs that need to be addressed. If
that happens, I'll make one or more release candidate tarballs
followed by a new 2.4.x release that addresses the critical bug.

Thanks everyone, and looking forward to a smooth 2.4.4 release :-)

-Toshio