[rwgk]

Summary

Maintain both supported bindings majors on main, with short release branches for stabilization and urgent fixes. This PR supplies the ongoing development and release policy for the preceding packaging/CI layers.

• Distinguish major-line maintenance, which can include explicitly selected API/Python/platform compatibility work, from a frozen patch release accepting only approved fixes and prerequisites. Record the scope in the checklist and release notes.
• Keep routine CUDA 12 development in cuda_bindings_12/. The historical 12.9.x branch stays frozen except for emergency fixes using compatible historical tooling; reconcile those fixes back into main.
• Replace automatic historical-branch backports with a manual workflow taking one already merged PR and one existing non-default target branch. It opens a reviewable PR; normal CI approval and merging remain separate. Workflow-file backports and conflicting/generated adaptations need manual handling.
• Remove the active backport_branch setting with its last legacy consumer and remove automatic Dependabot updates to the frozen branch. The reader continues accepting that field in earlier schema-2 tagged registries.
• Document release source/control revisions, exact-tag CI, dry-runs, component publication, owner publication of the shared GitHub Release draft, reconciliation, and version-selector ownership on main.
• Extend package-specific generation/review guidance and add explicit development/review instructions for existing SYNCED blocks. The bidirectional root-review rule and handwritten patch-transfer procedure are introduced earlier in cuda.bindings: configure independent CUDA 12 and CUDA 13 packages #3174.

Stack / Review Boundary

Previous: #3177. Next: #3182. The stack overview lists all six open PRs and the intended workflow.

#3174 through #3176 are intended to land together, with separate review scopes and cumulative CI at #3176; the first two are incomplete intermediate states. Release routing (#3177), maintenance policy (#3178), and the runtime fixes (#3182) follow that group. The complete proposed source tree is at #3182.

Baseline: main 2e6aa4e9ef89.

Suggested Review Order

1. .github/RELEASE-bindings.md
2. ci/README.md
3. .github/workflows/backport.yml
4. AGENTS.md

Validation

At the exact published heads, 328 CI-tool tests pass at #3176 and 341 at #3182. Full local pre-commit run --all-files --show-diff-on-failure passes at both, including actionlint and Lychee.

All three synchronized pytest bootstrap blocks and all four shared build helpers match. Tagged-source regressions retain compatibility with schema-2 registries containing the retired field. Hosted cumulative integration: full CI for the complete stack.

The manual backport workflow and hosted release/publication procedure were not exercised against live target branches or package indexes. A retained maintenance milestone and removal of the temporary preview bootstrap remain follow-ups after the validated integration group lands.

Checklist

• Relevant existing and focused regression tests cover the integration behavior.
• This description identifies the layer's scope and validation boundary.

[copy-pr-bot]

Auto-sync is disabled for draft pull requests in this repository. Workflows must be run manually.

Contributors can view more details about this message here.

[rwgk]

/ok to test 9cf3778

[github-actions]

Doc Preview CI
🚀 View preview at https://nvidia.github.io/cuda-python/pr-preview/pr-3178/
https://nvidia.github.io/cuda-python/pr-preview/pr-3178/cuda-core/
https://nvidia.github.io/cuda-python/pr-preview/pr-3178/cuda-bindings/
https://nvidia.github.io/cuda-python/pr-preview/pr-3178/cuda-pathfinder/
Preview will be ready when the GitHub Pages deployment is complete.

[rwgk]

/ok to test fb5cced