Dear RIOTers,
The release dates for the upcoming release are fixed as follows:
17.12.2021 - soft feature freeze, for high impact features
14.01.2022 - hard feature freeze, for all features
31.01.2022 - Release date
Could you please post your suggestions for features which you would like to see merged during this release cycle.
Cheers & happy hacking!
Emmanuel
Given that the Rust build system support is now better, I hope to merge in the Rust demos – so far, this has all been out of tree, but within this cycle an in-tree example should be possible.
(Provided the builders run on the current riotbuild containers, not sure what the state there is).
Oh, that’s great news!
Hi,
Given the latest traction on ztimer if we are able to get ztimer64, we would like to push for migrating to ztimer from xtimer.
There is an open issue with non-trivial migration changes, things where the API is not a drop-in replacement for xtimer, i.e. things the coccinelle script can’t change automatically.
So… soft feature freeze will be in effect as of today, end-of-day AOE. Happy coding.
Hard feature freeze approaching. Next Friday it is!
Feature freeze is now in effect, and we have an RC1.
The tracking issue for RC1 is now available too.
Advertizement aimed at the next release manager(s): the automated scripts do work like a charm, assuming your GPG is set up and you have generated an access token.
Testing is underway, progress looks good on RC1 already (follow this here)
Starting to draft the release notes!
Make sure your favorite prominent new features / changes ends up highlighted in the summary of the notes!
(Now taking suggestions 
Wow RC1 passed without issues and we can go directly to release? Would be a first, I believe. Congratz everyone!
I will spin an RC2 with the few backports that happened, but it looks promising enough as is, indeed, AFAICT (still missing a couple of interop tests, but morale is high