diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/committers-guide/article.sgml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/committers-guide/article.sgml
index 7145b899a8..3d89031c44 100644
--- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/committers-guide/article.sgml
+++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/committers-guide/article.sgml
@@ -2803,11 +2803,42 @@ docs:Documentation Bug:freebsd-doc:
- How long is a ports freeze?
+ What is a ports slush
or
+ feature freeze
?
- Usually a week or two.
+ During a release cycle the ports tree may be in a
+ slush
state instead of in a hard freeze.
+ The goal during a slush is to reach a stable ports tree
+ to avoid rebuilding large sets of packages for the
+ release and to tag the tree. During this time
+ sweeping changes
are prohibited unless
+ specifically permitted by portmgr. Complete details
+ about what qualifies as a sweeping change can be found
+ on the Portmgr
+ Implementation page.
+
+ The benefit of a slush as opposed to a complete
+ freeze is that it allows maintainers to continue adding
+ new ports, making routine version updates, and bug fixes
+ to most existing ports, as long as the number of
+ affected ports is minimal. For example, updating the
+ shared library version on a port that many other ports
+ depend on.
+
+
+
+
+
+ How long is a ports freeze or slush?
+
+
+
+ A freeze only lasts long enough to tag the tree.
+ A slush usually lasts a week or two, but may last
+ longer.
@@ -2817,7 +2848,7 @@ docs:Documentation Bug:freebsd-doc:
- During the ports freeze, you are not allowed to
+ During a ports freeze, you are not allowed to
commit anything to the tree without explicit approval
from the Ports Management Team. Explicit
approval
here means that you send a patch to
@@ -2834,12 +2865,17 @@ docs:Documentation Bug:freebsd-doc:
Note that you do not have implicit permission to fix
a port during the freeze just because it is
broken.
+
+ During a ports slush, you are still allowed to
+ commit but you must exercise more caution in what you
+ commit. Furthermore a special note (typically Feature
+ Safe: yes
) must be added to the commit message.
- How do I know when the ports freeze starts?
+ How do I know when the ports slush starts?
@@ -2848,29 +2884,29 @@ docs:Documentation Bug:freebsd-doc:
announcing the start of the impending release, usually
two or three weeks in advance. The exact starting time
will not be determined until a few days before the
- actual release. This is because the ports freeze has to
+ actual release. This is because the ports slush has to
be synchronized with the release, and it is usually not
known until then when exactly the release will be
rolled.
- When the freeze starts, there will be another
+ When the slush starts, there will be another
announcement to the &a.ports; and &a.committers;, of course.
- How do I know when the ports freeze ends?
+ How do I know when the freeze or slush ends?
- A few hours after the release, the ports management team
- will send out a mail to the &a.ports; and &a.committers;
- announcing the end of the ports freeze. Note that the
- release being cut does not automatically end the freeze.
- We have to make sure there will not be any last minute
- snafus that result in an immediate re-rolling of the
- release.
+ A few hours after the release, the Ports Management
+ Team will send out a mail to the &a.ports; and &a.committers;
+ announcing the end of the ports freeze or slush. Note
+ that the release being cut does not automatically indicate
+ the end of the freeze. We have to make sure there will
+ be no last minute snafus that result in an immediate
+ re-rolling of the release.