Symfony project follows a time-based development process where two new minor versions are released each year and a major version is released every two years.
This year, Symfony 3.4 and Symfony 4.0 will be both released at the end of November 2017. The only difference between both versions is that 3.4 includes all features deprecated in 3.x branches and 4.0 removes them.
Two months before their final releases, Symfony versions enter into a "feature freeze" period. During this time, we can't add new features and we solely focus on polishing and stabilizing the new features (and even reverting them if they don't work properly).
In other words, this week is our last chance to add new features to Symfony 3.4 and 4.0.
How can you help us?
- Review the open pull requests labelled as features in the Symfony repository so we can finish them on time.
- Review the open issues labelled as features in the Symfony repository and warn us if we've missed a feature that you consider important.
- Don't mind about open bugs, because we can work on them anytime, even during the "feature freeze" period.
Given that deprecated features can't be removed until a new Symfony major version is released, this week is our last chance to deprecate features and remove them in Symfony 4.0. Otherwise, we'll need to wait until Symfony 5.0 is released on November 2019.
Great news! If we had beta version release for 4.0 much earlier than scheduled official release would be very nice. I remember we had Symfony 2.0 beta releases for quite a while before the stable version came out.
Well technically after feature freeze it will be a beta version (maybe there will be no label but based on the beta version definition you can consider it as beta).
You are right. We usually release a number of betas (around 3) and then at least one RC (release candidate) version. There will be plenty of opportunities to test everything before the final release. Cheers!