2023Q4 freeze has started

[Greg Troxel <gdt%lexort.com@localhost>]

See https://www.pkgsrc.org/quarterly/ for a larger discussion of freeze
procedures.  As usual, the goal is to fix all broken things while not
introducing any new breakage, being particularly mindful that
improvements tested on one platform may be regressions on another.

My usual freeze plan:

    No new packages

    Build fixes are welcome

    Bug fixes (especially security fixes) are very welcome

    Micro updates that would be eligible and appropriate for stable
    branch pullups, because they fix a security bug or something
    serious, are ok

    Micro updates for packages whose recursive total depending package
    count is < 25 are ok

    For any other updates (especially under mk or pkgtools), please ask,
    explaining why the update furthers pkgsrc's goals of stabilty and
    usefulness for users. While there's no intent to completely prohibit
    changes, I'm concerned about impacts to platforms not tested, and I
    value working packages from the branch over packages being slightly
    newer.

Note that the last point is not "no", it is "ask, and *explain why it is
safe*".  Please ask here, so that anyone with knowledge about why it
might not be safe can chime in.



Testing is very helpful, especially on less typical platforms.  This
includes replacing packages in an existing installation, bootstrapping,
building binaries and using pkgin on some other system, and pretty much
anything anyone would do.

To test, to first order

  cvs up -A  # to move from whatever branch or earlier to pkgsrc-current

  either
    run pbulk
    pkg_rolling-replace
    use pkg-chk or whatever from a starting point of no packages
    bootstrap and start


This branch, there is an in-discussion change to adjust pkg_install to
validate certificates when doing https fetches.  There will likely  be a
patch to test at some point, and it may be an early pullup.  If you are
interested, you can prepare to help test by making sure your system has
trust anchors configured the way you think they should be, and you can
check that by using wget (without --no-check-certificates :-).

I intend to unfreeze perhaps as early as 27 December, and that will
float later until some blend of when we have adequate stability and all
things that are reasonably fixable are fixed.  (This is the normal
plan.)

Thanks,
Greg