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Revision as of 17:32, 4 August 2009 by Jkeating (talk | contribs) (Change names to Alpha)

As of the Alpha freeze for a release, no new features or major version bumps are allowed for packages already in the Fedora collection (new packages can still be reviewed, added in CVS and built). The purpose of the Alpha freeze is to help ensure that changes have adequate time to be tested as well as to provide some focus on bug-fixing for the release. Development builds of packages can continue, however they will not be included in the test release unless you request a break of the freeze for your build.

If you think that you need to break the Alpha freeze, then you should ask for approval. To do so, file a ticket in our Trac Space with the following information: (Note, don't forget to login, or you will not get email notifications of ticket changes)

  • A description of what you want to change
  • Rationale for why the change is important enough to be allowed in after the freeze.
  • Impact of *not* accepting the change at this point of the schedule.
  • Information on what testing you've already done on the change to help reduce the risk.

The release team will evaluate the request and provide feedback. If the request is rejected, then you'll have to wait for the freeze to end for your package to appear in Rawhide. Disputes over rejected changes can be escalated to FESCo

Approval will come in the form of +1's. Two +1's (without any negative feedback) are necessary to build. If there is negative feedback, conversation will ensue and a new vote will be issued.

Note that ignoring the freeze process and introducing new features anyway will lead to your package being reverted and a reduction of the chances of an exception being made.

Once the Alpha freeze has lifted (near the time the Alpha release is made public) changes will be allowed without special request, however we ask that you keep your changes to bugfix in nature and preserve stability of the release as we work toward the final release.