Hi,

Once again, it's time to review the current state of lenny.
The last few
weeks have been rather busy with major transitions, so this
mail is a
bit late.


Architecture status
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The status of Debian on the armel architecture has continued
to improve,
so we have decided to upgrade it to a proper release
architecture.
The architecture qualification pages on wiki.debian.org are
still
missing a LOT of information, so please put in a concerted
effort to
ensure that these are completed shortly.


Major transitions
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Since our last update, we have upgraded the python and perl
versions to
the latest current upstream versions. These upgrades were
the last major
changes to the base system for lenny. Also, updates of ocaml
and gcc-defaults
have successfuly happened. A transition of xulrunner is
still pending,
however this will be one of the last (or the last) larger
transitions.


Release goals
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* Support for future gcc versions

gcc-4.3 will be the default on all architectures in the near
future. Only
a few bugs are left in lenny and most of these are already
fixed in 
unstable. We consider the work for this release goal to be
successfully
completed.

* Switch /bin/sh to dash

There are still quite a few bugs open about bashisms, but
most of those
have a patch included. Please NMU. This goal doesn't mean
we'd switch to
dash as a global default, but if people do so on their
system, there
shouldn't be any issue after the last bugs have been
finished off.

* piuparts-clean archive

Over 50 bugs remaining, many with little activity.  Since
these are
problems that affect all users and are usually fixed by
little changes to
the maintainer scripts, more attention to this goal would be
very
welcome.

* double compilation support

Most of the double compilation problems have been fixed
since the last
release update and there are only about three dozen bugs
left. Please note
that many of the packages still affected are in bad general
shape, so each
NMUer should consider if the package in question shouldn't
be removed
instead.

* Prepare init.d-Scripts for dependency-based init systems

Wider testing of dependency-based init systems has lead to
some new bugs
for this goal, but the current state looks quite well. We
are confident
that we will have full support for dep-based init system in
lenny.

* I18n support in all debconf-using packages

Finished. Yay.

* Support for python2.5

Finished. Yay.


Removals from testing
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There have recently been some raised eyebrows about removals
from
testing. The release team has a clear policy in the matter:
packages with RC
bugs older than 20 days, with no activity from the
maintainer are reason
enough for a removal from testing. Only packages that are
leaf nodes in the
dependency tree get removed this way.

This does not mean (yet) that your package will not be
shipped with lenny, a
new upload with the offending bugs fixed, and the package
will transition like
any other.


BSP Marathon
~~~~~~~~~~~~
At time of writing, we have 470 open RC bugs, which is 470
too many.  A
coordinated effort is needed to reduce this number, so we've
decided to
resurrect last year's very successful BSP marathons. As a
reminder, we
still have a 0-day NMU policy in effect.

Please note that in a BSP, you shouldn't just NMU every RC
bug you see.
While you are working on a package, check for other
low-hanging fruits
(like translation updates, typos that can easily be fixed,
...) and fix
them in your NMU. On the other hand, if you notice that a
package looks
unmaintained, refrain from fixing the bugs for now and try
to find out if
the package should be removed or adopted by another
maintainer instead.

To give our BSPs a more targetted feeling, we want to assign
one group of
RC bugs and one release goal to each weekend:

BSP on weekend 2008-06-14 to 2008-06-15 in Utrecht, the
Netherlands [BSP:NL]
------------------------------------------------------------
-------
 + Fix remaining FTBFS bugs
 + Fix remaining problems with dash as /bin/sh [RG]

BSP on weekend 2008-06-28 to 2008-06-29 in Cambridge, UK
[BSP:UK]
--------------------------------------------------------
 + Check debian-installer and the installation process
 + Fix piuparts problems [RG:P]


Release schedule
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Though the number of release critical bugs concerns us, we
are pleased
by the overall state of lenny. Most big software packages
have been
updated to the major version that will be shipped in lenny,
so we will
be able to concentrate on polishing in the following
months:

Early of June 2008
  Freeze of the non-essential toolchain
    The "non-essential toolchain" means things
like debhelper, cdbs
    and a big chunk of other things usually needed to
produce binary
    packages.

End of June 2008
  Freeze of all library packages
    This will affect all packages that produce library
packages used
	by other packaged software. Packages without r-deps won't
be
	frozen at this point.

Mid of July 2008
  Full freeze
    Please don't wait with uploads for the last day before
the freeze,
    thanks.

September 2008
  Release lenny!


Package team news
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 * The GNOME team has decided to delay the upload of
nautilus 2.22 (and
   several other similar packages) to unstable. GNOME 2.22
introduced
   the new gvfs library, a replacement for the venerable
gnome-vfs,
   which is, while introducing several new features, not yet
completely
   regression-free. More complex file backends, such as smb,
are still not
   ready for mass-deployment.
 * The KDE team is continuing to prepare packages for KDE4.1
development
   releases. The first beta has just been uploaded to
experimental and
   user are encouraged to test it [KDE41]. Please note that
we haven't
   decided yet on the inclusion of KDE4.1 in lenny, but plan
to do so
   in the near future.
 * Iceweasel/Firefox and other Mozilla stuff: A transition
to the new
   xulrunner version 1.9 is ahead. xulrunner 1.9 is another
word for
   iceweasel 3, so massive changes planned. [XUL]


Freeze coming up
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We are going to freeze the complete toolchain and all libs
VERY SOON. This
means that we need your help in ensuring a smooth release
process. If you
have a new library that is needed for lenny, do not wait a
month to upload
it, as it won't make it in time. However, please don't
immediately upload
either. Send debian-release a mail, and prepare packages in
experimental.
Now is the time to think about and prepare those final
versions of these
libraries.


Tricks from the Release Team
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The tool that sends mail to package maintainers when their
package is removed
From testing [TRILLE] don't know about all our recently
added members. That's
the reason why you don't always have the name of the Release
Team member that
asked for your package removal in that mail. This is being
worked on right
now. Until then you can consult Release Team members' hint
files directly on 
our webpage [HINTS].

Cheers,
Marc
-- 
http://release.debian.org
Debian Release Team

References:
 [RG] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?us
ers=debian-releaselists.debian.org&tag=goal-dash
 [RG:P]   http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?us
ers=debian-releaselists.debian.org&tag=piuparts-stable-upgrade&
dist=testing
 [KDE41] http://ekaia.org/blog/2008/05/29/h
ow-to-install-kde-4-beta1-from-experimental/
 [XUL] http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2008/05/msg00
009.html
 [TRILLE] http://peop
le.debian.org/~henning/trille/
 [HINTS] http://relea
se.debian.org/britney/hints/
 [BSP:NL] http://wiki.de
bian.org/BSP2008/Utrecht
 [BSP:UK] http://w
iki.debian.org/BSP2008/CambridgeJune