Preface
Approximately one week before Feature Freeze, I wrote a post which consolidated much of the pings and notes that flavors need to be aware of before Plucky’s Feature Freeze. That post was well-received, so I decided to write a followup.
This is intended to supplement any information provided by the Release Team, not replace it. Anyone from the Release Team is welcome to edit this post (Discourse moderators, please make it so.) If I am missing anything important, please do feel free to add it.
Team Reports and Status Updates
Below is a list of useful announcements, information, and milestones which occurred between the previous post and this one, in chronologically ascending order (we have been quite active!):
- February 14th: The glibc 2.41 transition was announced. Thank you to @schopin and everyone involved for your work!
- February 20th: I created a post providing statistics with an endpoint of Plucky’s Feature Freeze, which has been well-received. I will do another followup post to that once we release Beta.
- February 21st: Feature Freeze was announced, thanks @utkarsh!
- February 21st: Ubuntu Desktop provided an update, thanks @jibel!
- February 22nd: Xubuntu provided an update, thanks @bluesabre!
- February 28th: Ubuntu Server provided an update, thanks @paelzer!
- February 28th: The new Ubuntu Technical Board is announced, congratulations to the new members and thanks for the announcement, @teward!
- March 1st: Ubuntu Developer discussion moved to Matrix, thanks for driving that, @rbasak!
- March 7th: Ubuntu Foundations provided an update, thanks @mclemenceau!
- March 8th: I announced a brand-new prototype for Meetingology on Matrix, which will go live on April 2nd.
- March 10th: The Flavor Sync happened, thanks for driving that, @ilvipero!
- March 13th: The Stable Release Updates team provides a friendly reminder that SRUs are also impacted by the upcoming Beta freeze. Thanks for the reminder, @ahasenack!
- March 14th: The Stable Release Updates team announces a new Matrix channel. Thanks for the announcement, @raof!
- March 14th: User Interface Freeze was announced, thanks @utkarsh!
- March 15th: Debian Trixie entered Transition and Toolchain Freeze.
- March 17th: A gentle reminder is provided regarding the upcoming Beta Freeze, thanks @paride!
(I arrived at these points via a combination of reading the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter and various mailing list archives.)
Pending Discussions
- Moving to Discourse from mailing lists?
- Q/R Cycle Debian Import Freeze: Synchronizing with Debian in a Sustainable Way
- rmadison alternative 'pkg-versions'
- autopkgtest.ubuntu.com - PPA results
Call To Action
For Ubuntu Flavors, here are some specific notes to keep in mind as we near Plucky’s release. This is an optional checklist (subject to more strict enforcement by the Release Team as they see fit); do what is best given your flavor governance structure:
- Do you have at least one representative from your flavor in Ubuntu Flavors, Ubuntu Release, Ubuntu Development, and Ubuntu SRU? If not, please provide a point of contact in each one of those channels.
- Please take another look at the release schedule. Does the timing work out well for you, and if not, what does your bus factor story look like?
- Are you planning on participating in the Beta? If not, please communicate that as soon as possible so the Release Team is kept informed. (This was historically mandatory, so next steps are at the discretion of the Release Team.)
- In the Flavor Sync, we discussed emphasizing greater testing for the Beta release this time around, given we skipped the optional testing week. Does your flavor have a draft Beta announcement started? Do you need help with wording? Please do be sure to include a CTA for testing in your announcement.
- Please ensure you take a look at the Plucky upgrade docs and update them for your flavor as appropriate. Thanks, Tim!
In short:
- Communicate early and often. In my personal experience as a Release Manager for a flavor, if the Release Team gets a friendly heads-up beforehand when something is off, they are much more likely to work with you. It’s nice and helpful to do.
- Are you all set? Have you performed the usual checks this cycle against your deliverables (your ISO(s))? Are you certain you have seeded everything you need to, and do not have anything seeded that you do not need to have seeded?
- How can we help? We’re a team, with a diverse set of skills. If you need help with something, just let us know in the Flavors Matrix channel, whether that be additional testing hands required, help with a particularly tricky bug, confusion around a particular feature, or more, we strive to work together well. Communicate early and often; there is no such thing as a silly question.
