Hello Ubuntu developers, In the past years we accumulated quite a lot of different types of freezes. As recently seen on the mailing list and often on IRC, the multitude of freezes can often be overwhelming and confusing, so after discussing this on ubuntu-devel@ those were cleaned up, consolidated, and properly documented.
This is the main entry point: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDevelopment#head-93c8a38bbc124f5d34af970893deffc4bc91700e which lists all kinds of freezes, with links to pages which document each of the freezes in detail. In particular, the following things changed: * StringFreeze and ArtworkDeadline are subsumed under UserInterfaceFreeze now. * UpstreamVersionFreeze was dropped completely. The main things we care about with new upstream versions are: (1) introducing new features, and (2) changing ABI/API, so that we need to do transitions. (1) has always been covered by the already existing FeatureFreeze. The definition of FF has now been updated to cover (2), too. That way, we do not need to make a big fuss about upstream microreleases which only fix bugs and treat upstream bugfix-only microreleases the same way as we treat new syncs/merges from Debian. We already do that in practice for e.g. system-config-printer, where we have brilliant upstream connections, and fixes immediately go upstream. We believe this makes sense because for the purposes of release management it is not really important whether fixes come directly from upstream or from Debian or us. The ABI/API break would then be mentioned in the description of FeatureFreeze. * NewPackagesFreezeUniverse is subsumed by FF now, too, since they are just features on the distro level. Originally, this freeze was scheduled a bit later than FF in gutsy. However, since reviewing new source packages takes some days up to a few weeks, it has never been clear when to do the cut. The new definition of FF clearly defines this process now. * DocumentationStringFreeze has been added to the official freeze list. It has existed for a long time already, and is a freeze for the documentation team, not for the packages in the distribution. However, since it is important for the entire process, it should be listed on the page, too. According to those changes, the instructions how to request exceptions [1] have been updated for above changes. The other pages which refer to those freezes have been updated as well ([2], [3]). Thank you for your attention, Martin Pitt on behalf of the Ubuntu Release Team. [1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FreezeExceptionProcess [2] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/GutsyReleaseSchedule [3] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReleaseScheduleTemplate -- Martin Pitt http://www.piware.de Ubuntu Developer http://www.ubuntu.com Debian Developer http://www.debian.org
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