Code freeze is such an idiotic concept. What year do we have? Just make a goddamn release branch and do your codefreezy things there. Why the fuck would we stop the entire development just because you can't figure out git?

Managers imagining the project as a physical object are responsible for a wide range of problems

@lorentz I wish they threated it as psychical object more. Taking a feature change as serious as moving a wall

the concept is not idiotic but the implementation you have is definitely idiotic. Freezing is always on releases and branches

It’s a great concept during summer or winter break so everyone can go on vacation, work is not life.

@asgs is that a code freeze anymore though? It's just preparing a release.

And for the most idiotic implementation, in one company they had 2 months long code freeze. No new features could be developed. Developers were not given vacations during that time. Fortunately I was just a consultant so it was a very short gig.

@msdsk that's plain retardation. Good you don't work there anymore

Freezing is always from.the release perspective. Mainline/Nightly dev should never stop unless the product roadmap itself is frozen or the budgets are cut

The freezing is only on the stuff that is about to be released not the entire codebase. For releases usually a feature freeze is enough. Sometimes a more code freeze approach is needed when the project is huge. Only newly introduced bugs from testing are triaged. New bug tickets on existing release are pushed to next release.

An actual code freeze is on the currently deployed code to ensure stability or the service during a certain period. Let's say everyone needs to fill in taxes in a certain month. During that period you don't want any down time as the impact will be huge.
However development can still go on. It's just not released/deployed.

So the freezing concepts are useful but like with any idea, execution is everything... You work with morons.

@hjk101
Oh, I absolutely agree with having release freezes or feature freezes. It's indeed that I've been working with morons.