Debian developers reported about the transfer of the debian 12 to the stage of soft freezing of the package base , in which the reception of new starting packages is stopped and the possibility of re -inclusion of previously remote packages is closed.
on March 12, 2023, a rigid freezing is scheduled before the release, in which the process of transferring key packages and packages without Autopkgtests from Unstable to Testing will be completely stopped and the stage of intensive testing and correcting the blocking release of problems will begin. The stage of rigid frost is introduced for the first time and is considered as the necessary intermediate stage before a complete frost, covering all packages. The full frost time has not yet been defined.
Debian 12 release is expected in the summer of 2023. Currently there are 392 critical errors that block the release (a month ago there were 637).