Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 06:30:18AM -0400, Michael Lauzon wrote:
> July 27th, 2009
> 
> The Debian project has decided to adopt a new policy of time-based
> development freezes for future releases, on a two-year cycle. Freezes
> will from now on happen in the December of every odd year, which means
> that releases will from now on happen sometime in the first half of
> every even year. To that effect the next freeze will happen in
> December 2009, with a release expected in spring 2010. The project
> chose December as a suitable freeze date since spring releases proved
> successful for the releases of Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 (codenamed “Etch”)
> and Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 (“Lenny”).
> 
> Time-based freezes will allow the Debian Project to blend the
> predictability of time based releases with its well established policy
> of feature based releases. The new freeze policy will provide better
> predictability of releases for users of the Debian distribution, and
> also allow Debian developers to do better long-term planning. A
> two-year release cycle will give more time for disruptive changes,
> reducing inconveniences caused for users. Having predictable freezes
> should also reduce overall freeze time.
> 
> Since Debian's last release happened on Feb. 14th 2009, there will
> only be approximately a one year period until its next release, Debian
> GNU/Linux 6.0 (codenamed “Squeeze”). This will be a one-time exception
> to the two-year policy in order to get into the new time schedule. To
> accommodate the needs of larger organisations and other users with a
> long upgrade process, the Debian project commits to provide the
> possibility to skip the upcoming release and do a skip-upgrade
> straight from Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 (“Lenny”) to Debian GNU/Linux 7.0
> (not yet codenamed).
> 
> Although the next freeze is only a short time away, the Debian project
> hopes to achieve several prominent goals with it. The most important
> are multi-arch support, which will improve the installation of 32 bit
> packages on 64 bit machines, and an optimised boot process for better
> boot performance and reliability.

Dependancy based init just hit unstable this week.

ia32-apt-get is in progress and is starting to work, although I am not
sure it is a great way to do it yet (interface wise, the backend of it
works very well).

> The new freeze policy was proposed and agreed during the Debian
> Project's yearly conference, DebConf, which is currently taking place
> in Caceres, Spain. The idea was well received among the attending
> project members.
> 
> http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090729

-- 
Len Sorensen
--
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