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Debian Project
http://www.debian.org/
Potato Development: Test Cycle Three Update
July 2, 2000
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(as usual, bcc'ed to -devel-announce, and be careful where you reply to)
By the looks of things we've just about got potato tidied up, now.
There're only 16 outstanding release critical bugs against potato [0]
most of which will have to be ignored (no fix is known, no workaround is
known, and the package can't be removed), or are already largely fixed
and will be uploaded soon.
So, what're we still waiting for before we can start up test cycle three?
* kernels for non-i386 architectures -- i386, powerpc and sparc [1]
have pre2.2.17 kernels ready; alpha has a mixture of 2.2.13 and
.15; arm has 2.2.10, .12 and .13; m68k has 2.0.36 and 2.2.10.
These need to be updated as much as they're going to be, and
then the outdated images, patches, sources, and headers can
be removed.
* boot-floppies -- the debian-boot team is largely on top of this,
but hasn't yet uploaded them to incoming. Beta floppies are
available in http://www.debian.org/~joeyh/bf/
* xfree86-1, xfree86-2 -- Branden has both of these done, but has
not been able to upload them in their entirety due to a lack of
bandwidth; he'll be working around this over the next couple of
days
* autobuilder sync up -- Any packages that autobuilders wish to get
updated need to be recompiled and uploaded. arm in particular
seems fairly out of date, and most architectures still need to
update a couple of the packages that have changed since TC2 [2].
When these items are completed (or completed as much as they're going to
be), we will stop accepting any changes to the archive again, build CDs,
and enter the third test cycle. The purpose of the third test cycle is
simply to ensure that we're ready to release: we believe the previous
two cycles have shaken out most of the bugs in the install procedure,
so we don't expect major problems.
Apart from the above, the major ways you can contribute to helping
potato release now is to watch the RC Bug List [3] and help diagnose
and fix any new (or unresolved) issues that appear. Alternatively,
the debian-publicity list will probably soon be involved in doing up
summaries of the changes in potato for the press, if your talents lie
in that area. And, of course, sending documentation, bug reports, fixes
and more complete diagnoses for non-RC and woody only bugs will be very
helpful for the next release.
Cheers,
aj (acting release manager)
[0] A drop which is mostly due to bugs that, while severe and annoying,
don't make the package unsuitable for release. Bugs that make
a package unsuitable for a particular user, segfault bugs, and
bugs that can be easily worked around all generally fall into this
category. We'll try to make sure there's a clearer definition for
woody, since this takes up a lot of time needlessly. Note that
"normal" bugs are similarly likely to get fixed, they just won't
deprive the users who can use the package from it.
[1] Note that the sparc 2.2.17 kernel is still in incoming at the moment.
[2] A list of the packages that have changed between TC2 and TC3 and their
recompilation status is at:
http://auric.debian.org/~ajt/uptodateness.html
It misses the two non-US packages that got updated (sslwrap and
openssh), and is a little outdated on the packages that have been
updated since yesterday's dinstall run, but otherwise should be
complete. `-none-' means the package isn't available on a particular
architecture, `UTD' means the package is up-to-date, and `[+]' means
there are also some binary packages from other versions of this source
package in this architecture.
If you rebuild some of these packages for your arch and you're not
already running an autobuilder, be sure to coordinate your efforts
via the appropriate porters' lists to make sure you don't have any
clashes while uploading.
It might be worth noting that the following packages got uploaded a
few times during the preparation for TC3 so might need to be recompiled
again if you're not careful:
emacs20-dl gnome-pim gpm openssh sysvinit xemacs21 xggi
[3] http://master.debian.org/~wakkerma/bugs
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.
``We reject: kings, presidents, and voting.
We believe in: rough consensus and working code.''
-- Dave Clark
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