Feedback on the stretch freeze
==============================

This document is intended to collect some feedback about what worked and what
did not work during the stretch freeze.  Hopefully, we can use this to
improve things for buster.

Kudos / Things that worked well
-------------------------------

 * Deadline + stages had clear announcements
 * Interactions felt friendlier (gradually improving since a couple of releases ago)
 * Pro-active unblocks 
 * Aiming for a kernel, and then making good schedule change decisions
 * Regular bulletins

Things where we can improve
---------------------------

 * No monitoring of common upgrade issues:
    - Need at least to make sure all desktop tasks are installable
    - And that they are upgradable from stable (if relevant)
    - Missing Breaks/Replaces for file moves still comes as a surprise
      (hello vlc, #862474 & #864695)
    - Trigger mess (nthykier: On my TODO list for buster)
 * "Completely Frozen Week" was a lot of last minute panic
 * Way too much work deferred to the freeze
   - Revisit (parts of) "Always Releasable Testing"? https://wiki.debian.org/Debate/JessieReleaseProcess/AlwaysReleasableTesting
 * binutils uploads were way to intrusive (kept introducing/showing regressions)
 * Late ACK the openssl 1.1 situation was busted
 * Dedication was late, and inclusion on debian-cd wasn't immediately spotted
   as buggy (had to respin amd64).
 * New release keys were too late (learned in hindsight)
 * Missing testing / feedback on the live images on the day of the release.
 * Still too many unnecessary pre-approval requests
 * Many requests for new upstream bugfix releases (heavy review burden)