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About this tool
Plan fixed-cadence release dates with code freeze, release candidate and GA milestones, weekend-safe.
The Release Train Schedule Planner generates a fixed-cadence release train schedule — the code freeze, release candidate (RC) and general availability (GA) date for every cycle — from one starting GA date and a cadence in weeks. It follows the train model used by Chromium's 4-week release cycle and SAFe's Agile Release Train: releases leave on schedule and unfinished features catch the next train. Release managers and engineering leads get a publishable milestone table, with weekend ship dates automatically pulled back to Friday.
Open Release Train Schedule Planner on AltFTool — it loads instantly in your browser.
Set the 'First GA date' and the 'Cadence (weeks between GAs)' from 1 to 26, then 'Releases to plan' from 1 to 24 and an optional Version prefix such as v7.
Enter 'Code freeze lead (days before GA)' and 'RC cut lead (days before GA)' up to 90 — the RC comes from the frozen branch so it cannot exceed the freeze lead — and tick 'Shift weekend milestones back to Friday'.
Read the Release / Code freeze / RC cut / GA table with each milestone's weekday and the stabilisation window in days, then press 'Copy schedule' for a Markdown pipe table to paste into a wiki.
Every release gets a code freeze, RC cut and GA date derived from your lead-time settings.
Milestones landing on Saturday or Sunday shift back to Friday — dates only ever move earlier.
The planner rejects impossible setups, like a freeze lead longer than the cadence itself.
A release train is a fixed-schedule release model: versions ship on a set cadence (every 2, 4 or 6 weeks) and any feature that is not ready simply waits for the next train instead of delaying the release. Chromium and Firefox ship on 4-week trains, and SAFe formalises the idea as the Agile Release Train.
Code freeze is the date the release branch stops accepting new features — only critical fixes land after it. The release candidate (RC) is a build cut from that frozen branch for final validation, and GA (general availability) is the date the release ships to all users. The freeze-to-GA gap is the stabilisation window, commonly one to two weeks.
Most teams on a 4-week train freeze 7–14 days before GA, cutting the RC about a week out. The freeze must be strictly shorter than the cadence — a 14-day freeze on a 1-week train would mean freezing before the previous release has even shipped, which this planner flags as an error.
Nobody staffs weekends to catch a bad release, so trains avoid shipping into them; this planner moves Saturday and Sunday milestones back to Friday, and many teams go further and target Tuesday–Thursday. Shifting earlier rather than later keeps the published date a worst-case deadline.