Release process Julep

[simonbyrne]

• How often should we make future releases?
• What should be the timelines and requirements for alpha, beta, RC, etc.?
• When should we upgrade LLVM?

We should also fully document all the steps in making a release (e.g. https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/blob/883c8a38920985e0c02df169ff8c379731d88fc6/Makefile#L112-L129)

[simonbyrne]

e.g. https://forge.rust-lang.org/release-process.html

[StefanKarpinski]

My proposal is roughly:

• Quarterly time-based releases with a month freeze before the release: anything that's merged by the month before is in, anything else isn't.
• Not sure we need alphas and betas for minor releases, a month of release candidates might be enough.
• Upgrade LLVM whenever LLVM is released.
• Consider the last release of the year a "long term support release" which will get ongoing bug fix updates
• All the other releases will get bug fix releases until the following minor release and not usually many beyond that.