Re: Release update: debian-installer, kernels, infrastructure, freeze, etch, arm

[Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>]

On Fri, Apr 01, 2005 at 03:48:00PM +0200, Andreas Barth wrote:
>...
> Major changes in etch
> ---------------------
> 
> If you intend to make major changes (like a C++ ABI bump) during the
> development of etch, please speak with the release team as soon as
> possible, describing the changes you're planning and why.  This way, we
> can help you to make your transitions as smooth as possible, ensuring
> that packages go quickly into testing/etch, don't hold up other packages
> or the release in general, and don't take us by surprise.  We would
> appreciate it if you could send these emails before the end of April
> to debian-release@lists.debian.org.

Is this an April Fool joke?

If not, the release team should also send the information required for 
this:

When is the estimated freeze date for etch?

It doesn't need to be an exact date, but someting like
"third quarter of 2005" or "mid-2008" would help to avoid situations 
like the sarge C++ transition that was too early [1] or the more than 
two years old X11 that will ship with sarge (and that doesn't support 
all hardware supported by recent X.org releases) [2].

And please learn from past release management mistakes and announce a 
_realistic_ estimated freeze date for etch [3].

>...
> Keeping track of RC bugs in testing
> -----------------------------------
> 
> Since BTS version tracking is a post-sarge feature, we depend on your
> help to keep track of RC bugs that have been fixed in unstable but not
> testing.  Over the past few months, we've been tracking these bugs
> mainly through the use of reopened, sarge-tagged bug reports.  You can
> continue to use this method to let the release team know about
> release-critical issues, but we would encourage you to use
> http://www.wolffelaar.nl/~sarge/ to send us comments on the
> importance of particular updates waiting in testing.  This applies not
> just to release-critical issues (which should be marked as "critical" on
> that page), but also to important ones (and "minor" ones, if you feel
> inclined).  For usage information about this site, please see the
> previous announcement concerning it[1].

For the record:
I started doing this during the last days [4].

RC bugs are IMHO better since they also show up in your RC bugs metric.

> Cheers,
> Andi Barth

cu
Adrian

[1] the first birthday of gcc 3.4.0 is only a few days from now
[2] the "outdated X11" problem was already present in woody where
    XFree86 4.2 might have been included
[3] and avoid the non-working "aggressive goals" [5]
[4] that's extra work only required by the usage of testing and version
    tracking in the BTS alone will not be sufficient to handle this -
    but that's a different discussion
[5] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2003/08/msg00010.html

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed