NixOS 23.11 — Release Schedule

[figsoda]

Hi, we are figsoda & Ryan Lahfa, the release managers for NixOS 23.11 ("Tapir").

We're also happy to work with Alejandro Sánchez Medina and Lennart Mühlenmeier, who will be the release editors for this NixOS release.

Below you can find the release calendar for the next two months running up to the planned release at the end of November 2023. 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!

	Date	Affects	Events
✔️	2023-10-04	—	Start discussion about "Feature Freeze & Release Blockers" with ecosystem maintainers
✔️	2023-10-19	all branches	Restrict breaking changes to Release Critical Packages
✔️	2023-10-30	all branches	Restrict all breaking changes with the exception of desktop environments
✔️	2023-11-06	master	Wait for staging-next merge into master; begin first staging-next cycle
		master	Begin Zero Hydra Failures campaign
✔️	2023-11-13	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
✔️	2023-11-20	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-23.11	Branch-off
		master, release-23.11	Tag 23.11-beta on release-23.11 and 23.11-unstable on master
		master, release-23.11	Create release channels
		master, release-23.11	ZHF fixes go into master and need to be backported to release-23.11
		release-23.11	Prepare for release, finish remaining issues
✔️	2023-11-29	release-23.11	Release! Also, ZHF ends
	2023-12-09	—	Release Retrospective, everyone is invited to give feedback!

---

Definitions

• Backport
  • Cherry-picking a change from master into release-23.11
  • Use the backport action by applying the backport: release-23.11 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

[nixos-discourse]

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

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/lets-have-a-great-23-11-release-cycle/33765/1

[sbourdeauducq]

Is this release going to have Python >=3.11 by default ?

[Atemu]

Yes. In fact that sort of already happened: #251878 (part of #257792).

[figsoda]

The date for restricting breaking changes to Release Critical Packages has been delayed for #241692 (llvmPackages: 11 -> 16 on Darwin and Linux), in particular we are waiting for #253031 and #253009

[figsoda]

Breaking changes to Release Critical Packages are now restricted. That means the following packages should not receive any more breaking changes:

• binutils
• gcc
• glibc
• llvm
• systemd

Note that some breaking changes are still in the staging branch, so the master branch will still receive these changes once they are merged in, but other new breaking changes should be held off until branch-off.

[TheRealGramdalf]

Apologies if this is the wrong place to ask (yes, I've looked at the Gnome 44 -> 45 PR), but is Gnome 45 aimed for release along with 23.11? I ask primarily because of Gnome Extensions.

[vcunat]

Yes, it is.

[LunNova]

@figsoda @RaitoBezarius Looking for input on whether it would be appropriate to merge at this point. It's not intentionally breaking but the answer may still be no as there's risk?

#259070 (comment)