Development Focus ----------------- We are entering the last weeks of the Xena development cycle. From now until the final release, we'll send a countdown email like this every week. It's probably a good time for teams to take stock of their library and client work that needs to be completed yet. The non-client library freeze is coming up, followed closely by the client lib freeze. Now is a good time to make decisions on deferring feature work to the next development cycle in order to be able to focus on finishing already-started feature work. Please plan accordingly to avoid any last minute rushes to get key functionality in. General Information ------------------- We are now getting close to the end of the cycle, and will be gradually freezing feature work on the various deliverables that make up the OpenStack release. This coming week is the deadline for general libraries (except client libraries): their last feature release needs to happen before "Non-client library freeze" on September 19. Only bugfixes releases will be allowed beyond this point. When requesting those library releases, you can also include the stable/xena branching request with the review (as an example, see the "branches" section here: https://opendev.org/openstack/releases/src/branch/master/deliverables/pike/o... A quick reminder of the upcoming freeze dates. Those vary depending on deliverable type: * General libraries (except client libraries) need to have their last feature release before Non-client library freeze (August 19th). Their stable branches are cut early. * Client libraries (think python-*client libraries) need to have their last feature release before Client library freeze (September 2nd) * Deliverables following a cycle-with-rc model (that would be most services) observe a Feature freeze on that same date, September 2nd. Any feature addition beyond that date should be discussed on the mailing-list and get PTL approval. After feature freeze, cycle-with-rc deliverables need to produce a first release candidate (and a stable branch) before RC1 deadline (Sep 13 - Sep 17). * Deliverables following cycle-with-intermediary model can release as necessary, but in all cases before Final RC deadline (Sep 27 - Oct 01). As we are getting to the point of creating stable/xena branches, this would be a good point for teams to review membership in their xena-stable-maint groups. Once the stable/xena branches are cut for a repo, the ability to approve any necessary backports into those branches for xena will be limited to the members of that stable team. If there are any questions about stable policy or stable team membership, please reach out in the #openstack-stable channel. Finally, now is also a good time to start planning what highlights you want for your deliverables in the cycle highlights. The deadline to submit an initial version for those is set to Feature freeze (September 2nd). Background on cycle-highlights: http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-discuss/2021-August/024105.ht... Project Team Guide, Cycle-Highlights: https://docs.openstack.org/project-team-guide/release-management.html#cycle-... knelson [at] openstack.org/diablo_rojo on IRC is available if you need help selecting or writing your highlights Upcoming Deadlines & Dates -------------------------- Non-client library freeze: Aug 19 (R-7 week) Client library freeze: Sep 02 (R-5 week) Xena-3 milestone: Sep 02 (R-5 week) -- Hervé Beraud Senior Software Engineer at Red Hat irc: hberaud https://github.com/4383/ https://twitter.com/4383hberaud