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From: Planet Debian
Subject: Alexander Reichle-Schmehl -- What you can do for Lenny
To: ticker-planetdebian[bei]lists.infodrom[punkt]org
Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2008 14:26:55 +0200 (CEST)

http://blog.schmehl.info/Debian/releasing-lenny

Alexander Reichle-Schmehl -- What you can do for Lenny

You probably noticed by now, that Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 aka Lenny
hasn't been released in September. Well, that's a shame, but very
easy to explain: Too many release critical bugs[1].

Well, it's pretty hard to estimate, how fast RC bugs will be
fixed, and apparently our release team was a bit to optimistic :(

The big question is: What can *you* do, to help release Lenny at
least in this quarter? That's pretty easy: Fix rc-bugs, take care,
that the fixed packages are migrated to Lenny, do upgrade tests,
document problems in the release-notes. Pretty simple, isn't it?

For users

Even as a simple user (aren't we all just users?) you may help
getting Lenny released. Some things you can do:

- If you are running stable (aka Etch), you could consider
upgrading to Lenny and see, if everything works fine. Currently
there are no detailed release notes documenting the procedure, so
you best way to test upgrades are to:

- Make backups

- Change your »/etc/apt/sources.list«

- Run »aptitude update« to get information about new packages

- Run »aptitude install dpkg aptitude apt« to install the newest
package management

- Run »aptitude full-upgrade« If something goes wrong / something
unexpected happens, please report it. If you already know a
specific package, report a bug against that package. If you don't
know, please report a bug describung the problem you experienced
to the »upgrade-reports« package. If your problem is something,
which can't be fixed properly, but should be documented (e.g.
hardware support regressions, packages no longer available) please
report a bug against the »release-notes« package (Bonus points if
you not only report the bug, but also supply a paragraph to be
added to the release notes).

- Speaking of the release notes: You can take a look at the bugs
reported against the release notes[2] and see if you can help
there, e.g. by writing a paragraph describing a problem.

- Install the package devscripts[3] (you'll need the version
provided by backports.org[4], and run the script »rc-alert
--include-dists TU«. You'll get a list of release critical bugs
open for one of the packages you have installed. Guessing that you
have them installed, because you are using them and are interested
in them, you should have a very high interest to get this bugs
fixed :)

You can try to help, by trying to reproduce them and reporting
that to the bug report. There are even some easy bugs, where the
maintainer hasn't found the time, yet to fix it. Bug 497290[5] for
example didn't needed deep technical skills. It just needed
someone with some time to collect the needed data for the
copyright file.

- If you speak a language other than English, you might consider
joining the translation efforts. While it is to late to translate
the debian-installer or the installation guide to a new language
for Lenny (perhaps for the next release then?), you could start
translating the release notes to a not yet supported language. If
you are willing to do so (which can be quite time consuming,
especially in the final phase), please contact either your
localization team[6] or the debian doc[7] mailing list if there's
no local mailing list.

See? Even as a simple user without deeper technical knowledge you
can help us getting Lenny in shape to be released. If you have
technical knowledge: Very good! You might want to read the next
section, too, and see what applies to you, there :)

For maintainers

It basically boils down to two things: If your packages have RC
bugs open in Lenny fix them and take care, that the fix will
propagate to Lenny. If your packages don't have RC bugs open, fix
someone else's RC bug. Surely you don't think, the release team
will fix the remaining rc bugs, do you? And surely you understand,
that your shiny rc bug free packages are kind of useless, if they
aren't released?

To search for bugs to be fixed, take a look at the unofficial rc
bugs thingy[8]. The URL lists RC bugs open in both Sid and Lenny.
Obviously they should be fixed ASAP. If no one takes care about
these packages, they might be removed from Lenny (if possible).

Again: Try to reproduce the bug, try fix it, upload an NMU (or
send your patch to the bug report and search for an sponsor).
You'll notice, that some of these bugs already have a patch. In
that case, your job would be to test the patch, report that to the
bug report and offer to sponsor an NMU.

Another interesting list is the list of rc bugs open only in
Lenny. These bugs have been fixed, but the fix hasn't propagated
to Lenny, yet. Normally, the release team will grant freeze
exceptions for these packages if possible. However, if the changes
to the fixed version are quite grave or the package in Sid depends
on a newer package than in Lenny that's not possible. In these
cases look out for packages marked as need tpu upload or similar.

Oh, and if you could refrain from upload new upstream versions of
packages to Sid, you would make all our lives easier. Some
reasons:

- New packages won't reach Lenny anyway.

- Upload new packages to Sid makes it harder to get a fix into
Lenny should a new bug be found.

- Uploading a new package makes it harder for other packages
depending on your package to be migrated to Lenny.

- You are wasting the buildd's time.

And of course you should spend your time fixing rc bugs anyway ;)

12:24pm[9] by Alexander Reichle-Schmehl (alexander[bei]schmehl[punkt]info)

Links:
1. http://bts.turmzimmer.net/graph-large.png
2. http://bugs.debian.org/release-notes
3. http://packages.debian.org/devscripts
4. http://www.backports.org/
5. http://bugs.debian.org/497290
6. http://lists.debian.org/i18n.html
7. http://lists.debian.org/debian-doc/
8. http://bts.turmzimmer.net/details.php?bydist=both&sortby=packages&fullcomment=on
9. http://blog.schmehl.info/Debian/releasing-lenny

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