The soft freeze has been on going for almost a month now and the full stretch freeze will start tomorrow night (UTC). It has definitely been visible in the number of unblock requests that we have received so far. Fortunately, we are no where near the rate of the jessie freeze. At the moment, all unblock requests are waiting for the submitter (either for a clarification or an upload).

Looking at stretch at a glance (items are in no particular order):

Secure boot support is progressing too slowly.

The openssl transition is still on-going and badly needs closure.

The MySQL to MariaDB transition is done.

The gcc-5 removal almost complete – missing only 2 packages.

About 150 RC bugs (in key packages) need to be handled

We are missing a stretch-backport suite so DSA can start their upgrade tests

The release checklist have a few items that could be completed now.

Secure boot support

Currently, we are blocked on two items:

We do not have signing done yet for the boot packages (not even manual signing).

Our shim is not yet signed, so no hardware would be trusting our boot chain out of the box.

After they are done, we are missing a handful of uploads to provide a signed bootloader etc. plus d-i and some infrastructure bits need to be updated. At the moment, we are waiting for a handful of key people/organisations to move on their part. As such, there is not a lot you can do to assist here (unless you are already involved in the work).

On the flip side, if both of these items are resolved soon, there is a good chance that we can support secure boot in stretch.See bug#820036 and blockers for more information on the remaining items.

Where can you help with the release?

At the moment, the best you can do is to:

Test (packages, upgrades, etc.) and report bugs

File bugs against release-notes for issues that should be documented

Fix RC bugs (please see the next section)

Release Critical Bug report

The UDD bugs interface currently knows about the following release critical bugs:

In Total: 1148 (Including 193 bugs affecting key packages) Affecting stretch: 294 (key packages: 158)

That’s the number we need to get down to zero before the release. They can be split in two big categories: Affecting stretch and unstable: 232 (key packages: 134)

Those need someone to find a fix, or to finish the work to upload a fix to unstable: 30 bugs are tagged ‘patch’. (key packages: 21)

Please help by reviewing the patches, and (if you are a DD) by uploading them. 17 bugs are marked as done, but still affect unstable. (key packages: 5)

This can happen due to missing builds on some architectures, for example. Help investigate! 185 bugs are neither tagged patch, nor marked done. (key packages: 108)

Help make a first step towards resolution! Affecting stretch only: 62 (key packages: 24)

Those are already fixed in unstable, but the fix still needs to migrate to stretch. You can help by submitting unblock requests for fixed packages, by investigating why packages do not migrate, or by reviewing submitted unblock requests. 36 bugs are in packages that are unblocked by the release team. (key packages: 14) 26 bugs are in packages that are not unblocked. (key packages: 10)

