🦝 NixOS 22.11 - Release schedule

[mweinelt]

Hi, we are Janne Heß & Martin Weinelt, the release managers for NixOS 22.11 🦝 ("Raccoon").

Below you can find the release calendar for the next two months running up to the planned release at the end of November 2022. If something feels unclear to you, don't hesitate to reach out, we are here to guide the process and make sure this will be a satisfying release for all of us.

Stay tuned for updates!

Schedule

	Date	Affects	Events
✔️	2022-10-03	—	Start discussion about "Feature Freeze & Release Blockers" with ecosystem maintainers
✔️	2022-10-17	all branches	Restrict breaking changes to Release Critical Packages
✔️	2022-10-31	staging, staging-next	Restrict all breaking changes with the exception of desktop environments
✔️	2022-11-07	master	Wait for staging-next merge into master; begin first staging-next cycle
		master	Begin Zero Hydra Failures campaign
✔️	2022-11-14	master	Wait for first staging-next merge into master; begin second staging-next cycle
		staging	Unrestrict all breaking changes; new changes will not be present in the release
✔️	2022-11-21	master	Wait for second staging-next merge into master
		staging-next	Unrestrict all breaking changes; new changes will not be present in the release
		master	Mark failing packages as broken
		master, release-22.11	Branch-off
		master, release-22.11	Tag 22.11-beta on release-22.11 and 23.05-unstable on master
		master, release-22.11	Create release channels
		master, release-22.11	ZHF fixes go into master and need to be backported to release-22.11
		release-22.11	Prepare for release, finish remaining issues
✔️	2022-11-30	release-22.11	Release! Also, ZHF ends
	2022-12-09.	—	Release Retrospective, everyone is invited to give feedback!

Definitions

• Backport
  • Cherry-picking a change from master into release-22.11
  • Use the backport action by applying the backport: release-22.11 tag
• Breaking change
  • A change that is likely to break downstream consumers
• Ecosystem maintainers
  • Maintainer teams that have enabled enableFeatureFreezePing in maintainers/team-list.nix
• Release Critical Packages
  • List of packages that usually cause widespread breakages
• Restriction
  • Changes of the mentioned kind cannot be merged while the restriction is active
• ZHF
  • Zero Hydra Failures
  • Period in which contributors focus on stabilizing packages
  • Usually through PRs targeted at the master branch

[NobbZ]

I found this issue by accident, it would be nice if the release schedule would be announced on the forum like it has happened the last releases, and if it is just a "schedule is available at GitHub, please follow the link".

The release schedule is a major piece of information and relevant to all of us, not only to those that follow GH issues. It should therefore be announced on all available channels.

In my opinion this includes, but is not limited to:

• The discourse
• The website (blog?)
• Matrix channel subject

[mweinelt]

• We will create a discourse post for the start of the zero hydra failures (ZHF) effort some time next week.
• We don't control the Matrix room topics, will talk to the infra team to do the update
• There will be a blog entry once we finish the release.

[mweinelt]

We currently have one more staging cycle planned before the branch-off. It's about time to get the last non-breaking changes in. Also please remember to be responsive when your changes on staging break in the next week.

[mweinelt]

That staging-next has been opened earlier today and that means staging is now free to receive breaking changes again. They will not arrive in the release.

We started staging-next two days early due to the available compute capacity on hydra, but if there are still changes that should pass through there they can still be targeted at staging-next.

[nixos-discourse]

This issue has been mentioned on NixOS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/2022-11-26-nix-nixpkgs-nixos-hackathon-in-zurich-rapperswil-jona/23402/3

[mweinelt]

The retrospective has been scheduled for 2022-12-09, 18:00 UTC and will likely happen on a Jitsi Meet call announced in the release management room on Matrix. Feel free to join!

[winterqt]

I think this can be closed/unpinned now. Thanks to everyone involved, and see you in May!