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Re: [RFC] Possibility for a beta release in Febuary



Below are a lot of comments intended to help make this schedule work, not as 
criticisms.

On Friday 11 January 2008, Otavio Salvador wrote:
> Bellow goes the proposed timeline.

It is a bit hard to really comment on this timeline as it does not really 
contain any info on the work do be done to make it happen. It is really 
just a bare timeline.

I do know one thing: if you wait until Feb 1 to actually start working on 
the release, the schedule is not going to be possible. I'd expect an 
overrun of at least 2 weeks, but more likely a month or more.
Basically, the schedule itself is fine, but to make it actally work, you 
have to start _now_.

> | Date	What happens
> | 2/1/2007	string freeze starts

I have personally not done string freezes for Beta releases, basically 
because that is all it is and there is just no necessity to have 
translations at 100%. That said, I doubt it matters very much as it's not 
all that likely there will be any string changes. I would not let it 
complicate the planning though.

What _does_ need to be done is to announce the schedule on the d-i18n list 
[1] so that translators are aware a release is in preparation so that they 
can update their translations if they want to. Maybe Christian will want to 
coordinate that.

Note that apt-setup currently has some strings that are not yet marked as 
translatable and that some further string changes will be needed in 
apt-setup. Not sure if that should be done before or after the Beta.

> | 2/11/2007	mass upload of translation updates

That is definitely a good idea, although I have ignored minor translation 
changes for Beta releases. 100% upload is really not needed, 90-95% is more 
than good enough.

> | 2/11/2007	kernel, modules and their udebs hitted testing

2.6.23 is quite old already. In fact, 2.6.24 is very close to release.
I would suggest contacting the kernel team to see when they think a 
migration to testing would be possible (I don't see any real blockers ATM, 
except for the meta packages) and to make the switch to 2.6.23 ASAP for D-I 
if a migration to testing soon looks possible.

> | 2/12/2007	mass migration of udebs

This is where this release is most at risk. You really should start 
migrating _now_, especially for non-D-I udebs! The reason is that a quite a 
few packages are badly out of sync [2] and that needs to be fixed before 
you can release. You should also start now to reduce the risk of udebs 
being caught in transitions at the moment when you would like to migrate 
them.
[3] is HUGE at the moment and you really need to get that reduced as much as 
possible. Simple udebs that we control ourselves and that don't have 
difficult dependencies can be done at this date. Anything else should be 
done ASAP.

Note that Jeroen has mostly done udeb migrations in the past, but I don't 
know if he's available (haven't seen him much recently). If not, that could 
be an additional challenge.

You should also inform the RMs at some point that all unblocks for udebs 
will need explicit D-I RM approval again.

> | 2/13/2007	debian-installer is uploaded

> | 2/15/2007	daily images are changed to use lenny installer

This is about netinst/businesscard CDs. Note that this is basically only 
asking Steve to change a symlink.

There is another change that needs to be made this time: builds for weekly 
CD images will need to be switched from using daily D-I images and sid 
udebs to using lenny images and udebs.

> | 2/17/2007	test of images starts
> | 2/23/2007	final image builds
> | 2/25/2007	release

You should probably already start preparing the list of changes for the 
release mail. Even though it may not seem that way, there have been a _lot_ 
of changes that deserve to be mentioned.

Cheers,
FJP

[1] For example: http://lists.debian.org/debian-i18n/2006/06/msg00187.html
[2] http://ftp-master.debian.org/~jeroen/d-i.out
[3] http://merkel.debian.org/~joeyh/d-i/testing-summary.html

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