Merge pull request #2028 from ehuss/reference-how-it-is-published

Add a description of how the reference is published

Author: traviscross

README.md

@@ -1,7 +1,6 @@
 # The Rust Language Reference
 
-This document is the primary reference for the Rust programming
-language.
+This document is the primary reference for the Rust programming language.
 
 ## Contributor docs
 
@@ -81,3 +80,15 @@ There are several different kinds of tests you can run (these are enforced on CI
 * `cargo xtask style-check`: This will validate some style checks (see [authoring guide](docs/authoring.md)).
 * `cargo xtask linkcheck`: This will validate that markdown links aren't broken.
 * `cargo xtask test-all`: Runs all tests.
+
+## How is this published?
+
+The process for getting the reference content into a [Rust release](https://doc.rust-lang.org/reference/#rust-releases) and on the website is:
+
+1. Changes are merged to this repository.
+2. [Triagebot](https://forge.rust-lang.org/triagebot/doc-updates.html) will automatically synchronize this repository to [rust-lang/rust]. This happens every other week. The reference is tracked in [rust-lang/rust] as a [submodule](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/tree/master/src/doc).
+  - This will open a PR on [rust-lang/rust] which needs to be merged, and that can take up to several days.
+3. At midnight UTC, whatever is on the default branch of [rust-lang/rust] will be a part of that nightly release, and will be published after a few hours to <https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/reference/>.
+4. Following Rust's [release process](https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/appendix-07-nightly-rust.html), every 6 weeks, nightly will be promoted to beta (<https://doc.rust-lang.org/beta/reference/>), and then 6 weeks after that it will be promoted to stable (<https://doc.rust-lang.org/stable/reference/>).
+
+[rust-lang/rust]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/