From:	 Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au>
To:	 debian-devel-announce@lists.debian.org
Subject: [2002-03-03] Release Status Update
Date:	 Sun, 3 Mar 2002 01:32:45 +1000

Hi guys,

The trivial little sideshow to the grand machinations of the Debian
Project Leader campaign sometimes known as the release is still moving
ahead. According to the RC bug list, for example, we've dropped below
200 outstanding release-critical bugs, which is nice, and compared to
a couple of weeks ago, something of a half way point.

Tomorrow, or in the very near future, most of the following packages
will be dropped from testing due to release-critical bugs of one type
or another.

        addressbook  gtk-engines-flat  scid
        bnetd        guitar            sfs
        cdebconf     gwenview          libpam-sfs
        cxref        heartbeat         timidity
        doc-rfc      inform            tkdesk
        doc-rfc-std  zmailer           wu-ftpd
        festival     latte             xpacman
        gem          noteedit          configlet
        gnome-sudo   rscheme           arbortext-catalog
        gri          rscheme-modules

If you haven't already guessed, you should be interpreting release
critical bugs filed against your package as a notice that it'll probably
be removed soon.

For people who're interested in keeping some handle on this, there are
currently two "release-critical bug lists" in use that have slightly
different properties.

There's the traditional one, at

	http://bugs.debian.org/~wakkerma/bugs/

which lists open release-critical bugs against all packages in unstable
(and thus also counts bugs against packages that are no longer in
testing).  It's accurate, and informative and helpful, and should be
the main place you look.

There's also the one the testing scripts generate which give an indication
of how buggy the versions of the packages in testing are, at:

	http://ftp-master.debian.org/testing/testing_probs.html

This list, unfortunately, is generated heuristically rather than
directly from information in the bug tracking system. So you only get
an approximate number of bugs against each package, and you *don't*
get a list of which bugs they were exactly, and it can be difficult
or impossible to find out. There are other problems with it too --
notably that it doesn't take into account bugs that have been fixed
today by moving a package from unstable into testing. It's useful as
a general guide to packages that I'm probably considering removing,
not as a sole source.

People interested in making sure packages they're interested in don't
get thrown out are encouraged to peruse both lists if they have spare
time. As long as your package isn't in one list or the other (ideally
both), there's a reasonable chance I can do something other than throw
it out. If it's listed in both, there's little else I can do, and you
can probably expect to see it mentioned in one of these posts.

For those of you having a first look at the "cannot be installed" packages
on the testing_probs.html page mentioned above, you'll notice a few
things: one is that i386 is doing incredibly well, with only caudium-php4
(which will be fixed in a couple of days when php4 and caudium get tidied
up), and roxen-ssl (which depends on the non-existant pike-crypto package,
which users are expected to build themselves). Another is that many of
the problems on non-i386 architectures are due to arch:all packages that
really aren't applicable to all architectures. Exactly what should be done
about those is an open question, and one that's being ignored for woody.

Those packages that were marked to be removed from testing last time
round have (generally) been unmarked now, so those that have been fixed
in the meantime will probably start reappearing in testing. Hopefully the
one place they won't start reappearing is in either of the above lists. :)

Some difficult problems still need sorting out:

	* sparc and alpha boot-floppies aren't up to date, and seem to
	  be having problems of one sort or another. Ben Collins is
	  working on the sparc boot-floppies; I'm not aware of anyone
	  working on them for alpha.

	* ld.so has disappeared from non-i386, but the old package was
	  marked Essential: yes, so can't be removed. A dummy package
	  for the non-i386 arches that had ldso that does nothing but
	  allow you to remove it should be created. It probably needs
	  to Conflict: with libc5 to ensure it's not used to satisfy
	  dependencies. There may be other pitfalls to be taken care of.

	* New installs of tetex don't work. Patches are available, but
	  fixed packages aren't.

Cheers,
aj

-- 
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
We came. We Saw. We Conferenced. http://linux.conf.au/

  ``Debian: giving you the power to shoot yourself in each toe individually.'' -- with kudos to Greg Lehey