As we are now in the feature freeze for Gazebo Jetty, we are implementing a new policy to allow development on stable releases to continue.
The Problem with the Old Policy
Previously, our feature freeze policy blocked new-feature pull requests opened after the freeze date from being merged into all Gazebo branches. While pull requests created before the deadline could still be merged, this approach halted any new development on stable, older versions of Gazebo for nearly two months.
The New Policy
Our new policy is designed to balance the stability of the next major release with the need for continuous development on existing versions. This policy does not change how we handle pull requests opened before the freeze date; they remain eligible to be merged.
Here’s the new process, effective immediately:
- Initial Two-Week Review Period: For the first two weeks following the feature freeze date, all branches remain frozen to new-feature pull requests opened after the deadline. During this time, our focus is to review, merge, and forward-port eligible pull requests that were submitted before the freeze began.
- Unfreezing Stable Branches: After this initial two-week period, branches for older, stable Gazebo releases will be “unfrozen.” New-feature pull requests targeting these branches can once again be opened and merged.
- Protecting the
mainBranch: To ensure the stability of the upcoming release, features merged into stable branches during the freeze will not be forward-ported tomainuntil after the release is complete.
Exception: Branches shared between the upcoming release and older releases (which can happen to slowly changing packages such as gz-cmake) will remain fully frozen for the entire duration of the freeze.
Timeline for Gazebo Jetty
This policy is now in effect.
- Now through 2025-08-11T00:00:00Z: The initial two-week freeze is active.
- After 2025-08-11T00:00:00Z: Maintainers will unfreeze stable release branches and begin merging new-feature pull requests opened after the freeze date.