[cut-team] Draft announcement for CUT 2011.03 release candidate 1

Michael Gilbert michael.s.gilbert at gmail.com
Sat Feb 26 22:47:27 UTC 2011


Hi,

Here is the draft of the message that I plan to send to debian-devel on
March 1st to announce the first CUT release candidate.

Note that I have chosen to use the term CUT below, but I understand
there is at least one dissenting opinion on that. I'll of course do
whatever the team wants, but I would like a team ruling on the matter
rather than a single voice.

I'll of course hold off sending this until everyone on this list is
sufficiently happy with the wording and implications.

Best wishes,
Mike

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Call for testing: Unofficial Debian CUT 2011.03 release
candidate 1

Hello world,

I am pleased to announce the very first Debian CUT release candidate
(version 2011.03rc1). This release is currently available in two
flavors, i386 and amd64, as mini iso images (16 Mib each) downloadable
from:
http://alioth.debian.org/~gilbert-guest/constantly-usable-testing/debian-cut-2011.03rc1-i386-mini.iso
http://alioth.debian.org/~gilbert-guest/constantly-usable-testing/debian-cut-2011.03rc1-amd64-mini.iso

These files can be written to CD or DVD media or directly to a USB
stick. Instructions for USB installation can be found here:
http://www.debian.org/releases/squeeze/i386/ch04s03.html.en

The testing period will be 5 days, and if no showstoppers are found in
that time frame, this will be the 2011.03 CUT final release, which is
currently targeted for 6th. Since this is not a stable release, a much
reduced subset of bugs will be considered showstopping (a different
criteria than stable's release critical bugs). These only include:
1.  Failure to install from scratch using default/common options
2.  Failure to boot into a graphical environment

There may be more criteria to be identified in the future.  If you
think an issue qualifies as a showstopping bug, please send a message
to cut-team at lists.alioth.debian.org, and we will determine whether it
is worth delaying the release.  If showstopper bugs are indeed found,
then the previous month's media will be bisected to find the one prior
to introduction of the bug.  That will be the second release candidate,
and there will be another announcement and 5 day testing period for
that.

Note that CUT releases will be guaranteed to be upgradable (all new CUT
releases will have >= package versions compared to the previous
release). However, there is no guarantee that there won't be breakages
or regressions in particular packages between CUT upgrades.  This may be
somewhat solvable via automated piuparts upgrade testing in the
future.  This will need someone interested to work on this particular
problem.

Note also that there will be no inherent security support for CUT
releases.  The images do automatically set up testing-security as an
apt source during installation, so any DTSA's will be automatically
applied to CUT installations.  However, as a monthly static release,
there will be no specific changes even for security issues.  However,
the security team mostly uses unstable nowadays to push updates into
testing, which will not be available until the subsequent CUT release.
This is another area that could potentially be improved if there are
volunteers interested in this. For more information on the current
testing security process, see:
http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/secure-testing/doc/narrative_introduction

Ideally for those wishing to have a mostly security supported system,
CUT will be a means to install testing, followed by and apt-get
dist-upgrade to testing proper, which does receive quasi-official
support from the security team (i.e. uploads to unstable that
transition to testing).

This is an unofficial project since it does not come with the backing
or support from Debian as a team, but hopefully that will change in the
future as the concept is proven out.

Anyway, enjoy!  And send feedback to cut-team at lists.alioth.debian.org.

Best wishes,
Mike Gilbert



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