[Nix-dev] Branch-off and Release Timeline for 17.03

[Robin Gloster]

Hi nix-dev,

I'd like to make sure all of you are aware that 17.03 will be branched
off master at the end of February, presumably on February 27. Then we
have a month to release a stable NixOS version, which I'm planning to
do on March 30. Please set the milestone for issues/PRs that you'd like
to get into the next release and make sure they land in master before
branching off. If something is unclear, ping me (globin) on github or
IRC and I'll try to answer swiftly. A PR/issue having the milestone
set, does not mean it will be included or necessarily needs fixing, but
would be nice to have included. Issues labeled with blocker are those
that I feel are critical and need fixing.

Please try to keep the failures on master to a minimum and fix up
currently failing builds already, then we'll have an easier time after
branching off.

For the release
 - I don't see GCC 6 being included, see the nixos/gcc-6 jobset on
hydra and gcc-6 branch on github. There are too many failures of which
many need quite some work. If someone is willing to work hard on this,
I might reconsider.
 - there probably will be no Nix version bump to the currently unstable
1.12 as the nix-daemon is buggy
 - we could bump the default Python version to Python 3, depending on
further input on the PR (https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/19626)

Timeline summary:
 - 2017-02-27: branch off release-17.03 branch
 - 2017-03-30: release 17.03

Lastly I'd like to thank Domen for asking me to take over and for his
hard work on the last releases and all contributors making NixOS better
steadily.

Cheers
Robin