[fpc-devel] [RFC] Modernising the FPC Release Process -- Proposal for Review

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Wed, 15 Apr 2026, Graeme Geldenhuys via fpc-devel wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
> A few weeks ago I raised concerns about the 130+ open merge requests
> sitting unactioned in the GitLab instance. That thread drew a lot of
> responses, and it was clear the frustration is widely shared. What it
> did not produce was a concrete path forward.
>
> Rather than continue that debate in the abstract, I spent some time
> studying how the Linux Kernel project manages its release process and
> what lessons might transfer to FPC. The result is a formal proposal,
> which I am sharing here for community review and comment.
>
>   https://gitlab.com/-/snippets/5980608
>
>
> --- What the proposal covers ---
>
> The central idea is a "Release Train" model: releases depart on a
> fixed schedule regardless of which features are ready, removing the
> "just one more thing" pressure that has kept us in freeze. The
> document covers:

As far as I am concerned, this is more or less what I envisaged.
So no discussion there.

One remark: 
It does not have to be the current FPC team members 
that make the releases.

If we have volunteers that are agreed to work on it, 
I can offer them access to gitlab. I also repeat that the foundation is
willing to offer some monetary recompense for this.

You don't need compiler knowledge to do all this, you mostly need
gitlab knowledge and some discipline.



Michael.