Soft freeze of 20.04 for the incoming auxiliary 20.04.6 point-release

[Lukasz Zemczak]

Hello everyone,

As you know, we recently had new shims for all the stable series, and
to make sure the Ubuntu media for 20.04 are still bootable on
secure-boot we need to respin the focal images (as those are still
supported). As the build infrastructure doesn't really allow us to
easily rebuild the images with just single packages updated, the
20.04.6 rebuilds will have to build from focal-updates as any normal
point-release.

We want to start building images ASAP, with an estimated delivery date
of March 16 (this week). This is all short notice, but this is also a
special point-release, as there is no real hard-deadline set for it -
it basically needs to be done and the sooner, the better. There's
never a good time for this, but seeing that 23.04 Beta is nearing
closer and closer, I think we need to at least try it this week.

We'll start preparations shortly. In the meantime, a request for both
the SRU team and the security team: please coordinate with me/Graham
before pushing anything to focal-updates or focal-security this week.
Let's assume focal is in a soft freeze as with a regular
point-release.

Thank you!

On behalf of the Ubuntu Release Team,

-- 
Łukasz 'sil2100' Zemczak
 Foundations Team
 Tools Squad Interim Engineering Manager
 lukasz.zemczak at canonical.com
 www.canonical.com