Temporary freezes of udeb-producing packages for d-i releases

Cyril Brulebois <[email protected]> Thu, 26 Dec 2024 02:31:08 +0100

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.devel.announce
Organization	Debian
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

Hi,

This mail is mostly a reminder of an existing practice documented in
similar mails over the years, but I thought it wouldn't hurt to mention
that process again. Even more so since it's been a while since the last
such freeze…

Packages producing udebs get frozen from time to time, when a Debian
Installer (d-i) release is getting prepared. The list of currently
affected packages can be found in the following release hints file:

  https://release.debian.org/britney/hints/freeze

If you want to learn a bit more about the reasons behind this, you can
read the following blog post of mine (yes, that was 10+ years ago):

  https://mraw.org/blog/2014/08/10/Why_is_my_package_blocked/

TL;DR: d-i is built upon many moving parts, testing takes some time and
sometimes regressions happen right before final installation images get
built. Avoiding such situations is the reason behind such udeb freezes.


As a maintainer, if you feel your package should be unblocked during
such a udeb freeze, you can file an “unblock” request against the
release.debian.org pseudo package, mentioning the block-udeb you'd like
to get an exception for. Bonus points if you include debian-boot@ and
kibi@ in X-Debbugs-Cc directly so that the installer team notices you're
requesting to get an exception. The release team would usually contact
us anyway, but looping us in from the start can increase your chances of
getting a swift reply.

Depending on the amount of changes and (planned or tested) consequences
for d-i, your package might be unblocked or might wait until after the
release has been published.


Looking at the previous release cycles, such freezes usually last for a
few days only, from a given debian-installer upload until installation
images have been built successfully, and haven't found to be crippled
with obvious bugs.

The freeze for the Debian Installer Trixie Alpha 1 release should happen
in the next few days, and will be lifted as soon as the release is
published.


Thanks for your attention and for your patience.


Cheers,
-- 
Cyril Brulebois ([email protected])            <https://debamax.com/>
D-I release manager -- Release team member -- Freelance Consultant

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