Squid release cycle definitions

Saw some discussion on IRC wrt the meaning of different kinds of
releases. Here is a short reminder in case anyone has forgotten.

The Squid release cycle consists of several different stages

1. Early development. Target audience is developers only. Large changes
announced a couple of days ahead on squid-dev, otherwise open for any
changes. No exact plan on what should or should not be in the release
yet.

2. DEVEL snapshots, when the developers are sufficiently happy with the
state of the tree but it's known there will be additional features.
Target audience is those who are interested in investigating the new
features before they are ready and developers preferring a more static
tree than HEAD. Some may call these "Technology Preview" releases. Here
it should also be a reasonably clear plan on what should be in the final
release.

3. PRE snapshots. These should be feature complete, and in a state the
developers are comfortable with a wider testing. Target audience is
those who are interested in getting familiar with the upcoming release
and those who can actively help squashing out the bugs. There is no
promise about stability, and it's even OK if there is known blockers as
long as they are isolated to some feature not strictly needed for trying
out/investigating the other features.

3. RCn release candidates. All known blocker bugs fixed. Target audience
is everyone with a lab setup to test the release and help squashing out
the bugs the developers couldn't detect in their labs.

4. STABLE1 production release. No blocker bugs for a few weeks, and
sufficiently low amount of known smaller bugs to make the developers
comfortable with a general "upgrade" recommendation to current users.

5. STABLE2 bugfix release, possibly with a STABLE2-RCx cycle first if
there has been large changes. For each STABLEn release the bar is raised
on what blocks a release, save for when critical/security bugs have been
detected.

last step repeated with new STABLEn releases for as long as the release
is active, which usually is until there is a new release in STABLE
state.

Some time between PRE1 and STABLE1 is the tree forked from HEAD to allow
for new developments entering the next major release. Exactly when
depends on the current state of development.

Regards
Henrik