Hi, We are back to the monthly release updates. Let's see what news there is to tell you for March... Release goals ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ After adding the g77 to gfortran transition to the list and deferring the "packages have to build correctly in dirty chroots" goal to lenny+1, we've decided to freeze the release goal list [1]. We've also changed the format of the published list to something machine parseable for easier data mining. We've seen quite promising progress with some of our goals: * debmake: Done. * python2.5 transition: There have been filed quite a few bugs about differences in memory management between python2.4 and python2.5. These are usually easily patched. * gcc-4.3 transition: The switch to gcc-4.3 as default compiler will happen soon (see below), so all of these bugs will become release critical. * UTF8 in control files: Most of these have been fixed now and are just waiting for transition to testing. * LSB headers in init scripts: Many packages have been updated and running a dependency based init system now works for most use cases. However, there are still a lot of bugs open against fringe packages. * dash: Build problems with /bin/dash as default shell have almost all been solved. A new round of bugs were filed about bashisms in /bin/sh scripts. You are invited to squash these at the BSP in April. * piuparts-clean archive, doublebuild: These release goals could profit from more attention. armel architecture ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Packages built for the armel architecture are now available from ftp.debian.org. Testing migrations scripts have been considering armel for some days now as non-blocking architecture. We hope that lenny/armel will soon converge to proper lenny, but the final decision on inclusion of armel in the set of release architectures has *not* yet been completed. Release schedule ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ There haven't been any changes in our release schedule. Please note that we want to release lenny in *6 months*, so only upload software that you can (and will) stabilize until then. Please refer to our last release update [2] for a full schedule. Note that this means we are entering the very soft freeze now. BSP Marathon ~~~~~~~~~~~~ At time of writing, we have 460 open RC bugs, which is 460 too many. A coordinated effort is needed to reduce this number, so we've decided to resurrect last year's very successful BSP marathons. As a reminder, we still have a 0-day NMU policy in effect. Please note that in a BSP, you shouldn't just NMU every RC bug you see. While you are working on a package, check for other low-hanging fruits (like translation updates, typos that can easily be fixed, ...) and fix them in your NMU. On the other hand, if you notice that a package looks unmaintained, refrain from fixing the bugs for now and try to find out if the package should be removed or adopted by another maintainer instead. To give our BSPs a more targetted feeling, we want to assign one group of RC bugs and one release goal to each weekend: BSP on weekend 2008-03-07 to 2008-03-09 --------------------------------------- + Fix release critical FTBFS bugs detected QA archive rebuilds [3] + Fix python2.5 and gcc-4.3 migration problems [4] [5] + Do first upgrade tests and report bugs BSP on weekend 2008-04-04 to 2008-04-06 --------------------------------------- + Fix remaining FTBFS bugs + Fix problems around the init system [6] [7] + Check debian-installer and the installation process + Start working on release and upgrade notes, collect items that need to mentioned in these documents BSP on weekend 2008-05-01 to 2008-05-04 --------------------------------------- + Fix piuparts problems [8] + Mass upgrade tests At the moment, we still haven't found hosts for all real life BSPs - so please check out if you can organize something. Please use [9] for coordination! There is also a small howto [10] with facts to think about before organizing a real life BSP. Package team news ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ * gcc: The default compiler version will be switched to 4.3 in the next few days. No big changes for C packages are expected, but the C++ header files have seen a thorough dependency cleanup. Some C++ packages will fail to build due to headers which now need to be included explicitly. * Iceweasel/Firefox and other Mozilla stuff. A xulrunner 1.9 should be uploaded to Debian quite soon, either as a new source package in unstable or as a xulrunner update in experimental. This will probably happen at the same time xulrunner 1.9 beta4 is released. As other news, the mozilla-stuff packaging team plans for lenny to push iceweasel 3 (based on xulrunner) to ease the security team work. Iceweasel-3 betas could be uploaded to experimental at some point in a not so far future, depending on the team available time. The Team's plans with respect to iceape and icedove are unclear at the moment as it's unsure which new upstream releases will happen in time for lenny. * KDE: There may be a possibility to include KDE4 in lenny. The efforts on KDE4.1 have been quite promising and seem to be leading to a desktop environment which can fully replace KDE3. The KDE team will provide betas and release candidates of the 4.1 release in experimental. Anyone interested is encourage to try them out and file any bugs found. In the event that KDE4.1 is on time, and there are no major issues, an upload to unstable in order to include it in lenny is possible. The actual decision has been deferred for now. Tricks from the Release Team ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ One might want to look at the 'Buildd information page' [11] when one is unsure about the wanna-build status of a package [12] or about the failure message in a build log. Lenny version ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ For reading this far, you receive the small reward of the knowledge that Lenny will be shipped as Debian 5.0. Cheers, Marc -- http://release.debian.org Debian Release Team Footnotes: [1] http://release.debian.org/lenny-goals.txt [2] http://release.debian.org/emails/release-update-200801 [3] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=debian-qa@lists.debian.org&tag=qa-ftbfs&dist=testing [4] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=debian-release@lists.debian.org&tag=goal-python2.5&dist=testing [5] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=tbm@cyrius.com&tag=ftbfs-gcc-4.3&dist=testing [6] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org&dist=testing [7] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=debian-release@lists.debian.org&tag=goal-dash&dist=testing [8] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=debian-release@lists.debian.org&tag=piuparts-stable-upgrade&dist=testing [9] http://wiki.debian.org/BSPMarathon [10] http://wiki.debian.org/HostingBSP [11] http://buildd.debian.org/~jeroen/status/ [12] http://www.debian.org/devel/buildd/wanna-build-states
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