The ports tree is now tagged and partially thawed.  Until 8.0 is released, sweeping commits still need explicit approval from portmgr to assure that tags can be slipped for potential security issues.  For more information what constitutes a sweeping change, see the portmgr web pages.

As an experiment, there will not be a complete ports freeze ahead of the release of 8.0.  To ensure that the tree is kept in a stable condition, we do need to have more discipline about the feature freeze we are currently using.  To achieve this, I have added a new tag to the commit log Feature safe: which needs to be set to yes explicitly for each commit.  While this is is tedious, it does mean that commits will be allowed without prior explicit approval from portmgr.  Portmgr is still working on a written set of rules for what is and isn’t allowed during a feature freeze, so please use common sense for now, and try to err on the side of caution and contact portmgr when in any doubt.  Sweeping commits touching a large number of ports, shared library updates affect more than a trivial number of ports, you get the picture; anything that would require a rebuild of more than a trivial amount of ports is not allowed without prior approval from portmgr.  With the release only a few weeks off, we cannot afford any major mishaps, so be conservative.

The feature freeze is enforced from right now and current plan is to tag the tree after RC1 is released.  There will be a short freeze while the tag is processed, and after that we will proceed with the ports slush as usual.

Please consider your commits in this light and help make this experiment a success so we can avoid long freezes for future releases.