Re: beta 2 and beyond
On Wed, Jan 14, 2004 at 10:33:57PM -0500, Joey Hess wrote:
> I've gone ahead and started the beta 2 release process. CD images are in
> place and I will send out the release announcement once the web site has
> updated. (Some install media won't appear in sarge until tomorrow's
> dinstall.)
>
> I have to say that this release took longer to get done than I'd hoped.
> We started out strong, the compromise was unavoidable and was handled as
> well as can be expected, the string freeze went well, the holiday
> slowdown was worse than I expected, and then it felt to me as if things
> trailed off at the end instead of us making a big push to finish the
> release. I'm going to think about this and try to figure out things that
> went wrong and how to avoid them, and I'd appreciate any insights anyone
> might have.
Don't ever make release schedules between christmas and new year :)
Also, the intrusion was a slowing factor which should not happen again
hopefully, and the NEW processing freeze made it even worse.
> Anyway with luck we now have a firm release, available in the sarge
> distribution, for three architectures, which is an important step along
> the way to sarge releasing with d-i.
>
> In a sense we're not done with beta2 yet, since we have between 1 and
> 2.5 architectures that are still in positions to possibly be added to
> the beta in a week or two. At the same time, I am eager to open unstable
> back up to continued development especially with so many improvements
> already waiting to go in. The conflict here is that if a package is
> destablised in unstable, and then the beta2 "backport" needs to get a
> minor fix to that package into sarge to make it work on a pending
> architecture, I won't be able to get that fix into sarge; it will be
> blocked by the changes in unstable.
I am dubious about the non-newpmac powerpc architectures. The subarch
handling that did work in Oldenbourg has been disabled, and there is not
yet support for different initrd's and kernels for a same arch. Would
enabling this inside the beta2 branch not create risk of breaking
something else ?
Also, i am a bit unhappy about this, we all knew it was needed, so why
was the existing subarch functionality disabled, and why did nobody care
about this ? And this does not only affect powerpc, all other arch with
subarch handling are affected.
> So starting after tomorrow's dinstall (just in case something goes
> wrong), unstable is reopened for uploads of:
>
> I. NEW udebs (partman, etc), that are not present in sarge.
> II. Any changes necessary for mips, alpha, and powerpc subarches,
> targeted at beta 2.
A new linux-kernel-di upload is needed tomorrow, after my -5 kernels
enter the archive, i missed the deadline yesterday. They add support for
old world pmac, as tested by Jeremie Koenig, and the pegasos RTC fix.
Also, is it ok, if in my next upload, i drop the udeb packages ?
Also, power3/power4 based boxes would need a new kernel config, but will
be slowed by NEW queue processing if i upload it. Well, this will only
be for 32bit kernel for those, not (yet) for 64bit kernels.
Also, a powerpc kernel upgrade may be needed for newer apple hardware,
maybe based on the -benh tree. Or maybe even an option for 2.6 kernels
for the G5 based pmacs ?
Finally, cdrom initrd is too big for chrp/chrp-rs6k builtin initrd.
netboot works fine tough.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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