Q to both: release date

[Lucas Nussbaum]

Dear Chris, dear Mehdi,

How is the release process doing? What is your guesstimate for the
release date? If you were asked that in a press interview, is there
something that you would like to stress about the release process or the
upcoming release?

(Yes, I'm aware that this is mostly outside of the scope of DPL
responsibilities. But in my experience, the DPL gets asked questions
such as "how is $foo doing?" quite frequently, for example in the
post-election press interviews.)

Lucas

[Chris Lamb]

Dear Lucas,

is there something that you would like to stress about the release
process or the upcoming release?

I think I would highlight that these indeed *are* outside the scope of
the DPL, implicitly stressing Debian's decentralised nature; this structure
makes Debian unique and very attractive for all sorts of use-cases so we
shouldn't be justifying or apologising for it.

I think these things are more important and more interesting to communicate
than a laundry list of version numbers of the major software packages that
we plan to release with.

Regarding the status of the release itself, I would naturally check in with
the release team and pass on whatever details they wished to publicise.

And of course, the usual exhortations to "please test…" :)


Regards,

[Mehdi Dogguy]

Post by Chris Lamb
Dear Lucas,

is there something that you would like to stress about the release
process or the upcoming release?

I think I would highlight that these indeed *are* outside the scope of
the DPL, implicitly stressing Debian's decentralised nature; this structure
makes Debian unique and very attractive for all sorts of use-cases so we
shouldn't be justifying or apologising for it.

It is true that Debian is decentralized but it is also true that
subjects are
handled in a transparent way. So any project member familiar with teams'
processes is able to find references online and give an idea on how
things
are going on. This can be done without stepping on someone's toes.

So based on that, it becomes even more interesting to give a point of
view
from an outsider since it might give others a few interesting pointers:
- how Debian judges the quality of its releases, which metrics are used
- what are the most important components and milestones of a release
- what is the release process
- what kind of tools Debian is using to follow progress of the freeze

It is not necessary to make a detailed description of each tool but it
helps
many people to have this overview and be able to dig into each subject
autonomously. I believe such a report helps others to understand our
work
and potentially where they may contribute.

Doing so, one should remember to not give any conclusion or anything
that
looks like a decision and must refer to the Release Team for an official
position/statement.

Post by Chris Lamb
I think these things are more important and more interesting to communicate
than a laundry list of version numbers of the major software packages that
we plan to release with.

I think lucas was not asking for the content of "What's new" section of
the
Release Notes. My understanding is that he was more interesting in our
way
to evaluate progress of a subject with an external point of view. Asking
teams
about status of a subject is a way, but being able to make our own point
of
view before engaging in a discussion can also be helpful and gives us
(maybe)
a different perspective. This can be summed up in a single point:
understanding
how teams work. It is not obvious since we have different kind of teams
(core,
development, translation, communication, project management, event
organization,
etc…). Each kind of team has its own workflow and set of tools.

Regards,

[Chris Lamb]

Post by Mehdi Dogguy
I think lucas was not asking for the content of "What's new" section of
the Release Notes.

Oh, I agree; I only mentioned it because it seem to be what external
entities tend to report on new releases in lieu of any other angle or
story. :)


Regards,

[Mehdi Dogguy]

Hi lucas,

Post by Lucas Nussbaum
How is the release process doing?

As noted by Chris too, the Release Team has all the details and can
reply
on this specific question. I've pinged them about issuing a status
update
on the freeze and proposed my help write/review the mail.

Looking at the numbers, the Release Team is doing quite well (as
always).
They seem to be able to process unblock requests quite quickly. Kudos
for
the Release Team!

Last update from a member of the team dates back to February:
https://nthykier.wordpress.com/2017/02/04/the-stretch-freeze-is-coming/

Since then, some blockers were resolved (stretch-backports area created,
gcc-5 removal done, openssl transition (mostly)).

Release Managers are keeping a checklist up-to-date on:

https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/ReleaseTeam/ReleaseCheckList/StretchCheckList

We've had a 2nd release candidate of the installer.

So, globally, it looks like it is going okay. I think that the Release
Team can be helped with more rc-bug squashers. There are also some BSPs
coming
soon. So I guess it would help to deal with a few issues.

Post by Lucas Nussbaum
What is your guesstimate for the release date?

“When it's ready!“, of course :-)

I am sure members of the release team (and especially release managers)
have an idea of which date (or period of time) to target for the release
date. They didn't disclose it. So I do not see a reason to do so on my
side. It would counter-productive and would send a bad message to people
following this mailing-list (as it could be taken as an announcement, no
matter the size of the warnings you could put in the mail).

I trust the Release Team to do a stellar job at handling this freeze
cycle, as always.

Post by Lucas Nussbaum
If you were asked that in a press interview, is there
something that you would like to stress about the release process or the
upcoming release?

Testing, Squashing RC Bugs, Reporting issues early.