The OpenDarwin release cycle has four stages: active-development, feature-freeze, code-freeze, and release. These stages only pertain to the OD_STABLE branch. Periodically the OpenDarwin Core Team will announce a release schedule, indicating the timeframe each of these stages will be in effect.
While in active-development, features on the Current branch which have proven reliable may be incorporated into the OD_STABLE branch.
Once a feature-freeze takes effect, no new features should be added to the OD_STABLE version of the project. Bug-fixes and security updates, on the other hand, may still be added to the OD_STABLE branch until the code-freeze takes effect.
After the code-freeze is in effect, no further development on OD_STABLE should take place until the end of the release cycle. (Note that critical updates, such as security patches, may be submitted after the code-freeze, but only after communicating with the Core Team, since any code changes at this stage may require delaying the release date.)
At the release date, the OD_STABLE branch will be tagged with a release identifier in the format of OD_STABLE_YYYYMMDD. This marks the sources that will be used for the OpenDarwin binary release. For optimum reliability, OpenDarwin should be built using sources from a OD_STABLE_YYYYMMDD tag on the OD_STABLE branch.