I'd like to suggest:

Prior to release, a release candidate *image* is cut. Only bug fixes
go into this, and would also be applied to the trunk.

This is a pretty common agile tactic which allows releases to
stabilize without ever halting development on the mainline.

Have cake and eat too!!!! Just make a copy of the cake before you eat it. :)

On Friday, December 11, 2009, K. K. Subramaniam <subbukk at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Friday 11 December 2009 08:04:14 pm Bert Freudenberg wrote:
>> IMHO instead of branching for release we should do a feature freeze and
>>  code freeze, maybe for 2 weeks, call the result a release, and then
>>  continue the happy hacking. Otherwise the burden of releasing again falls
>>  onto too few people. We should all be working towards a release together.
>>  The actual releasing would take nothing more than packaging and uploading.
> Sure.  We could have a short 'cool down' period when the  trunk is frozen. . A
> release is much more than packaging and uploading. People will need time to
> cleanup image, take screenshots and screencasts for documentation, update
> documents and websites, post announcements, blogs etc.
>
> Just so that the pace doesn't slacken, The Freeze can be kept short (say no
> more than two weeks) and well-spaced (say no more than four freezes in a
> year).
>
> Now back to the topic of image versioning :-).
>
> Subbu
>
>

-- 
Ron