The Trixie Freeze Schedule was released [1] this week, with dates later than we had originally expected when compared with the bookworm freeze schedule. I think it is possible for us to include GNOME 48 in Trixie so this starts discussion about whether to do that.
Calendar Summary ========== GNOME [2] ---------- 2025-02-01 GNOME 48 Beta tarball deadline. This is also GNOME's UI, API, and Feature Freeze. For the past several release cycles, this is when we start landing the new GNOME in Debian Unstable (and Ubuntu's development release). 2025-03-01 GNOME 48 RC tarball deadline 2025-03-15 GNOME 48.0 tarball deadline 2025-03-19 GNOME 48.0 release: This is a firm announcement/release date. Every other date on GNOME's calendar are tarball deadlines with the announced release days later. 2025-04-12 GNOME 48.1 tarball deadline 2025-05-** GNOME 48.2 tarball deadline. Not announced yet. My guess is it's after May 15 though. Debian [1] [3] ---------- 2025-03-15 Transition freeze. Transitions need to be complete in Testing by this date. 2025-04-15 Soft freeze. No new or returning packages allowed into Testing after this. 2025-05-15 Hard freeze for key packages (includes everything that is a dependency of gnome) and packages without autopkgtests. We would need unblock requests starting here. Known Transitions ========== 1. GNOME Shell/Mutter. The GNOME Shell transition is simpler now that it's disconnected from Budgie. I got the new Mutter library package through Debian's NEW queue already. Usually, GNOME Shell has stabilized enough for extensions at the Beta point but no guarantee. We have about 5 weeks to get this transition done from the beta tarball release to transition freeze and then one more month for any straggling extensions to get back into Trixie. For 47, most extensions worked with a simple update to metadata.json and debian/control. 2. glib/gtk/libadwaita. There aren't any issues with these in Experimental or in Ubuntu. glib and gtk need the most recent development releases packaged though. 3. Rust GTK stack. There will not be a major Rust GTK stack update/transition for GNOME 48 in response to distribution complaints [4]. So this detail is much easier than it was for the past several GNOME releases. 4. Glycin/rust-zbus transition [5]. Matthias Geiger has begun work on this. It affects Loupe and GNOME Snapshot but no other GNOME Core apps or GNOME libraries. We are waiting for some new rust-gufo* packages and rust-jpeg-encoder in the NEW queue. Still some more work needed but I think it's in good shape to land by early February if the NEW review is quick. Rust crates generally don't have versioned binary packages and therefore these transitions are not managed by the Debian Release Team currently. 5. evolution-data-server. I already packaged the 48 Alpha release of the evolution* stack in Experimental and there is not a soname transition this time. 6. Evince. Evince 48 Beta is expected to switch to GTK4. This would break everything using the Evince libraries (denemo, gnome-sushi, phosh-plugins, sugar-browse-activity, sugar-read-activity). Therefore, my plan is to package the new Evince in Experimental for evaluation. (I tried to do this for Evince 48 Alpha but the release was incomplete, mistakenly leaving out the gtk4 commits [6].) We would need a new source package, evince3, to repackage Evince 46, possibly only the libraries and not the app itself. Evince doesn't affect the rest of the GNOME stack really so we could choose to remain with 46 if we want. 7. tracker -> tinysparql and tracker-miners -> localsearch. This is leftover from GNOME 47. Fedora and Ubuntu have yet to do this transition either. It is not required to otherwise package GNOME 47 or 48. The renames are waiting in the NEW queue for experimental and then we need to verify whether the transition is smooth enough. 8. I still think switching from gnome-terminal to ptyxis would be a good idea but I think we are blocked by bash [7] and possibly a screen reader regression [8] Conclusion ========== That's a lot of details but I think we are in good shape to proceed with generally shipping GNOME 48. GNOME Shell and Glycin are the only core transitions we need. We should be able to get GNOME 48 RC in before the Transition Freeze and 48.1 in before the Hard Freeze. After that, we need unblocks or (soon enough) Stable Release Manager approval. References ========== [1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2025/01/msg00004.html [2] https://release.gnome.org/calendar/ [3] https://release.debian.org/testing/freeze_policy.html [4] https://github.com/gtk-rs/gtk-rs-core/discussions/1466 [5] https://salsa.debian.org/rust-team/debcargo-conf/-/issues/111 [6] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/evince/-/issues/2071 [7] https://bugs.debian.org/675008 [8] https://gitlab.gnome.org/chergert/ptyxis/-/issues/310 Thank you, Jeremy Bícha
