Consolidating the various freezes

[Martin Pitt]

Hello Ubuntu developers,

Matt Zimmerman recently raised the issue that 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 we should aim to clean up a bit and
consolidate them.

The currently defined freezes are listed on [1]. With my acting RM hat
on, I propose the following:

 * StringFreeze and ArtworkDeadline should be subsumed under
   UserInterfaceFreeze. 

 * UpstreamVersionFreeze should be dropped completely. The main things
   we care about with new upstream versions are:

   - introducing new features, which is covered by FeatureFreeze, and

   - changing ABI/API, so that we need to do transitions.

  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.

  The ABI/API break would then be mentioned in the description of
  FeatureFreeze.

 * NewPackagesFreezeUniverse could also go into FF easily. We
   currently schedule it later than FF on [2]; however, with the
   recent discussion about backlog processing, I think it would make
   sense to consider new packages features on the distro level and
   make them subject to FF. This gives us the necessary time to
   process the backlog in the NEW queue, too.

So we would be down to:

  OpenDevelopment
  DebianImportFreeze
  FeatureFreeze
  UserInterfaceFreeze
  BetaFreeze
  KernelFreeze
  ReleaseCandidate

which cannot be reduced further in a sensible way IMHO. I'd
definitively allow UI changes after FF, since there are often UI bugs
that we need to shake out.

If I do not hear any objections in the next days, I will do these
changes to [1], flesh out/update the pages behind the XXXFreeze links,
and also update [2] accordingly.

Comments appreciated!

Thanks,

Martin

[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDevelopment#head-93c8a38bbc124f5d34af970893deffc4bc91700e
[2] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/GutsyReleaseSchedule

-- 
Martin Pitt        http://www.piware.de
Ubuntu Developer   http://www.ubuntu.com
Debian Developer   http://www.debian.org
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