Yocto Project Release Checklist

Major Release

- Week prior to build of release candidate

 - Updates to the following packages will have occurred. DO NO PANIC, these come late in the release cycle
    - wic 
    - meta-yocto-bsp 
    - meta-yocto
    - linux-firmware 
    - bootloaders (grub, syslinux, u-boot, gummiboot, etc..) 
    - hwdata 
    - pciutils 
    - util-linux 
    - i2c-tools 
    - alsa 
    - graphics drivers 
    - cryptodev 
    - systemtap
    - perf
    - linux-yocto

- Prior to build of the first release candidate

 -  Is DISTRO_VERSION updated in poky.conf?
 -  Is SDK_VERSION updated in poky.conf?
 -  Is SANITY_TESTED_DISTROS updated in poky.conf?
 -  Are yocto-docs merged to the release branch?
 -  Has bitbake -f -c distrodata universe been run?
 -  Has an updated distro_alias.inc patch been accepted?

- After the final release candidate has returned from QA and is approved, verify the following:

 - Tarballs have been updated with the correct naming conventions.  (for release prior to 4.0)
 - BSP tarballs have been generated.
 - rpm and deb directories have been removed. (Discontinued after 4.0.x)
 - Machines subdirectories have been cleaned up. (Symlinks removed, dupes deleted, etc.)
 - Eclipse plugins/archives have been published to http://downloads.yoctoproject.org/ and https://ep.yocto.io/. (Discontinued after 2.6.x)
 - ADT has been published, if applicable. (Deprecated with Yocto 2.0 release and later.)
 - sha256sum file for the entire release has been generated. (Discontinued after 3.4.x)
 - Release Notes have been created, finalized, and approved.
 - Release Notes have been signed.
 - Repos have been tagged with correct commit and signature. 
 - Release and BSP pages have been created on yoctoproject.org website. (Deprecated with new page introduced in Nov 2023)
 - The README for each BSP has been checked and updated if necessary.
 - Documentation links have been created on yoctoproject.org website. (Deprecated with new page introduced in Nov 2023)
 - Update the release dates and QA link on website backend. (Deprecated with new page introduced in Nov 2023)
 - Download links have been tested. (Deprecated with new website page  in Nov 2023)
 - The mirror sync has been triggered and completed successfully.
 - Copy symlinked files into release sstate (Deprecated)
 - Update the idlebuild weekly build script to include any new branches
 - Update the slider at www.yoctoproject.org with the new release dates (Deprecated with new page introduced in Nov 2023)
 - The release announcement has been sent to the appropriate mailing lists. (yocto and yocto-announce)