Debian developers reported the transition of Debian 12 to the hard freeze stage before release, during which the process of transferring key packages and packages without autopkgtests from unstable to testing is completely halted, and the phase of intensive testing and fixing of blocking release issues has begun. The hard freeze stage is considered a necessary intermediate step before the full freeze, which encompasses all packages. The full freeze will take place a few weeks before the release, the exact date of which has not yet been determined.
This is the third stage of the freeze — the first stage was reached on January 12 and led to the cessation of 'transitions' (package updates that require adjustments to dependencies of other packages, resulting in temporary removal of packages from Testing), as well as the halt of updates for essential build packages. The second stage began on February 12 and was associated with the cessation of acceptance of new source packages and the closure of the possibility to reintegrate previously removed packages.
The release of Debian 12 is expected in the summer of 2023. Currently, there are 258 critical release-blocking bugs (a month ago there were 392 such bugs, two months ago — 637).
Source: opennet.ru
