Upcoming Debian Releases
The following message is a list of items to be completed for the upcoming
releases of Debian GNU/Linux. If something is missing, incorrect, or you want
to take responsibility for one or more items, please send email to:
Brian White <bcwhite@verisim.com>
For each upcoming release, the name of the task and the person who has claimed
responsibility for it (or "???" if nobody) is listed. An asterisk in front
means the job has yet to be completed.
Footnotes are indicated by "[n]" and give more information on that item.
Thoughts:
- Should all bug reports older than 12 months be required fixed/forwarded/etc.
before that package is allowed into the stable distribution? We could
eventually pare that down to 6 months.
- I suggest we schedule "rex" to be frozen at the end of October and to be
released at the end of November. (Something for your stockings!) Because
this release is already behind, I suggest that anything not done by
codefreeze just be pushed to release 1.3 instead of delaying 1.2. Minor
fixes can still be done in the 4 weeks before release.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Debian 1.2 (aka "rex")
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* Convert remaining a.out packages (???)
* Shared libraries should provide ".shlibs" files (???)
* Boot disk & kernel packages should be v2.0.24 or later (???)
* Boot disks should contain drivers for more systems/cards (???)
* Integration of modules, kernel, boot-floppies, & pcmcia (???) [1]
* Move all shared libraries into "libs" (???) [4]
* Move interpreters out of "devel" and into "interpreters(?)" (???) [4]
* Include the multi-thread support patch for the Objective-C runtime lib (???)
* Add support for resolutions beyond 1280x1024 to X config utility (???)
Debian 1.3 (aka "bo")
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* Shadow password support (???)
* Improvements to 'dselect' (???) [2]
* Package grouping to simplify install (???)
* 'dselect' to determine what to install/remove (???) [3]
Debian 1.4 (aka "unnamed")
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Footnotes
~~~~~~~~~
1 - Friday I used the boot floppies in the rex tree and I could load any
modules (NFS being the show stopper). In the Linux Journal review of
Debian (Nov Issue), explictly mentions this problem with 1.1 and it
hasn't been solved yet :( -- Chris Fearnley <cjf@netaxs.com>
2 - Dselect is our number one public relations problem. It's infelicities
lead others to believe that the package management has flaws and some
can't even get through it. One issue that was raised in a bug report was
to NOT pop up the help screen everytime dselect notices a
dependency/recommendation/conflict problem. I concur. I remember that
that bug report suggested that dselect should not pop up the conflict
resolution manager with its suggestions. I now disagree with that. The
feedback that Debian /cares/ about you not breaking your system (and
offers to suggest a resolution) is more important than the small
frustration in a case one was about to select those packages anyway.
Finally, I believe that dselect is too complex for a program that will
only be used by novices once every six months! Perhaps having only
options for
+ install, upgrade
- unselect, ignore (NOT current semantics so maybe a bad idea?)
r remove from system
And some way to override defaults? Would this be sufficient?
3 - I.e.: say I just want to install a package for a single library-- but I
also want the developer version and the static version... As it stands, I
can either su to root, find the packages and 'dpkg -I' or start dselect,
select the packages, install and wait *forever* as dselect does it's
thing. Instead of having dselect check every single package-- would it be
possible to have a "fast" mode that just installs/uninstalls what the user
selected? -- Bill Bumgarner <bbum@friday.com>
4 - Here's a quick-n-dirty division of the current devel into the above
classes: -- Lars Wirzenius <liw@iki.fi>
libs:
CGI-modules blt id-utils libc4 libelf libg++27 libident
libobjects libpam libwww-perl tcl74 tcl75 tclX tk40 tk41
interpreters:
expect gcl guile intercal j1 perl perl-suid perl-tk
postgres95 python python-base python-curses python-dev
python-doc python-examples python-gdbm python-misc
python-mpz python-net python-stdwin python-tk gclinfo
postgres95-docs
devel:
autoconf automake bin86 binutils bison byacc c2man
cflow dchanges ddd-smotif dejagnu dist dld dlltools
electric-fence flex ftnchek gcc gdb gettext gmp gnat
ilu indent libc4-dev libc5-dbg libc5-dev libc5-pic
libdb1-dev libelf-dev libgdbm1-dev libreadline2-dev
make ncurses3.0-dev ncurses3.0-pic p2c perl-debug pmake
ratfor77 slang-devel slang-lib strace tcl74-dev tcl75-dev
tk40-dev tk41-dev xxgdb glibcdoc cpp m4 cvs rcs
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