Update release dashboard to reflect the new monthly release timeline

Context

The GitLab release dashboard (introduced by &1124 (closed)) displays GitLab release information, specifically for monthly and patch releases. This data is accessible to GitLab internal users.

For the monthly release, the dashboard displays the ongoing version, the upcoming release date, and the status of the ongoing monthly release (open, announced or RC tagged)

Status description
  • Open: Engineers can create MRs, and any commit that reaches production is expected to be released with the active monthly release.
  • Announced: Guaranteed SHA has been announced in #releases slack channel. Signals that the RC tagging date is getting closer. Further commits are not guaranteed to be included.
  • RC Tagged: The stable branch has been created, and the release candidate has been tagged. No more commits will be included in the release.

Screenshot_2025-04-29_at_1.41.43_p.m.

Problem

Automate the creation of monthly releases in pr... (gitlab-com/gl-infra/software-delivery&1 - closed) will create the ongoing stable branch one week earlier in the release schedule to allow for thorough testing and timely backports. The early branch creation will modify the monthly release process to:

  • 2nd Wednesday of the month: RC and Stable branch creation
  • Up to 3rd Tuesday of the month: Bug fixes are backported to the active stable branch
  • 3rd Tuesday of the month (Late EMEA or early AMER): Final RC is created
  • 3rd Wednesday of the month Tag the final version
  • 3rd Thursday of the month Release

The release dashboard should be adjusted to represent this new schedule. The date representation should be updated to be easy to understand for engineers and provide value for their workflow, e.g., a date is specified for each release that guarantees feature inclusion.

The purpose of this issue is to:

  1. Generate a Dashboard proposal to reflect the monthly changes
  2. Open up follow-up issues
    • For implementation details for the monthly
    • To update the monthly release template steps.
    • For implementation details for the patch (follow-up)

The dashboard should be:

  • Easy to understand and hard to misunderstand
  • Point out a date that 'guarantees' feature inclusion. Note: The date will act as a deadline, and in most cases, guarantee feature inclusion, but the commit chosen will still depend on GitLab.com availability.

To do

Edited by Mayra Cabrera