Node.js 23 release plan

[RafaelGSS]

Hey folks,

According to our schedule, we must release Node.js 23 on Oct 15. I can help on this release but don't think I can commit all my time to it. I suggest we do it as a team effort. These are the tasks we need to do as preparation (feel free to edit this table if I forgot something). Please include your name to the task you can do:

• Create a release branch (v23.x-staging, v23.x)
• Create v23.x labels
• For now on, all semver-major PRs should ping @nodejs/tsc. (cc: @nodejs/issue-triage)
• Create a release proposal - @RafaelGSS (cut-off 2 weeks prior to the release, right after Node.js 22.10.0)
• Generate release candidates
• Create CHANGELOG for v23 (review it with @nodejs/tsc)
• Create a Node.js blog post for v23 (if we have meaningful changes)
• Create expected assets for v23 (https://github.com/nodejs/build/pull/3915) @richardlau

cc: @nodejs/releasers

[RedYetiDev]

FYI Following this guide, I've pinged the TSC to some semver-major PRs that were recently opened / have had recent activity.

[joyeecheung]

Since there is a plan to unflag require(esm) on v23, it would be useful to know when the staging branch would be created to coordinate better. There are two more remaining features that ideally should land before it's unflagged (see https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/52697), but I don't think it would be a huge problem for them to land on v23.1.0 or v23.2.0 (I think as long as we make sure they are backported as a pacakage to LTS, we are good). I am still doing some ecosystem research into what unflagging entails for high-impact npm packages, but for v23.0.0 at least I don't think it's vital for it to be very thorough (at least so far, most npm packages seems to be fine with it, and around 98%? of the ESM-only high-impact packages I've tested so far can be loaded with it).