Freezes

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'''This page is a draft and should in no way be considered authoritative. Please help improve it.'''

Freezes are restrictions on which changes can be uploaded in order
to try and stabilize Ubuntu for release. There are various different
freezes that happen at different times in the cycle, and they are
of different types, affect different packages, and have different
procedures for uploading during them, so understanding them all
can be difficult.

You can see which freezes happen and when on the ReleaseSchedule,
and each is linked to a page about that particular freeze, so that
is a great place to go for the information. This page will provide
a bit more explanation about the types of freezes and how to handle
them.

Freezes are generally also announced on
[[http://lists.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-devel-announce|ubuntu-devel-announce]],
so subscribing to that can keep you up-to-date. However, there aren't
reminders about upcoming freezes posted to that list, so keep on top
of which freezes are upcoming will help you to meet the deadlines in
your work.

== Uploading Restrictions ==

There are two ways that freezes are enforced, which are known as
"soft" and "hard" freezes. Knowing whether a particular freeze is
soft or hard is important, as it will allow you to know what effect
uploading will have, and who needs to be aware of changes that you
make for them to be included.

=== Soft Freezes ===

Soft freezes have no mechanism in the archive software to enforce them,
they just rely on each developer to ensure that they only upload
appropriate changes.

For instance, FeatureFreeze is a soft freeze, as you can still upload
as before, you are just required to seek exceptions for new features.

Most importantly, freezes for the alpha releases of Ubuntu are soft
freezes. This means that nothing will prevent your changes from entering
the archive, so you must ensure that they don't interfere with the
process of releasing the alpha. See the section on milestone freezes
later for more information on what this means.

=== Hard Freezes ===

In contrast to soft freezes hard freezes flick a switch in the archive
software such that all uploads are not immediately accepted, they instead
end up in the UNAPPROVED [[../Queues|Queue]]. Packages remain in this
queue until they are explicitly accepted by an
[[../ArchiveAdministrators|Archive Administrator]].

This means that your changes can be reviewed before they are accepted,
so that extra review can be done, and it is not left to your discretion
to enforce the rules of the freeze.

While this could mean that you could upload with less care, it is not
wise to, as those who can review are generally very busy at this time
already, and extra work at these crucial periods is not appreciated.
It is generally a good idea to ensure that someone on the release team
knows that you will be making an upload to fix the particular issue
before you do so (fixing a release critical bug is generally permission
enough).

#REDIRECT UbuntuDevelopment/PackageArchive#Freezes

DeveloperGuide/Freezes (last edited 2009-08-26 16:30:10 by i59F71AA2)