OpenJDK will need to be updated across all versions of RHEL in April for the next quarterly security update. We should prepare for this by building and testing the upstream build promotions of OpenJDK which we release throughout February & March. This will reduce the amount of work that needs to be done during the critical period in early April, when the security patches are added.

We will include these build promotions in the most recent z-stream of each major RHEL version (currently 8.9.0-z & 9.3.0-z), and current y-stream. Depending on scheduling, y-stream may need to be excluded if the expected GA occurs prior to the security update. This is the case in April 2023.

For z-stream, changes should wait until we know there are no batch updates to be shipped before the security update. Batch update deadlines are:

• RHEL 8.8-z: Mon 2024-03-04 (REL_PREP deadline)
• RHEL 8.9-z: Mon 2024-02-12 (REL_PREP deadline)
• RHEL 9.2-z: Mon 2024-02-26 (REL_PREP deadline)
• RHEL 9.3-z: Mon 2024-02-26 (REL_PREP deadline)