Hello again,

Over the past few weeks most of the following packages have been removed
from the upcoming release due to bugs and such [0].

    acroread           libqt3-psql             mercury
    antlr              libsnmp-ruby            msyslog
    cgiemail           lire                    orbit-mt
    chdrv              lmbench                 pfaedit
    devel-protocols    logtrend-complexalarm   popularity-contest
    dnrd               logtrend-consolidation  pptp-linux
    efingerd           logtrend-doc            qtella
    eiffelfox          logtrend-ftpagent       radiusd-freeradius
    galeon             logtrend-httpagent      rie
    galeon-beta        logtrend-linuxagent     sather
    garchiver          logtrend-mailbridge     scilab
    gnotepad+-help     logtrend-snmpagent      syslog-common
    honyaku-el         logtrend-storageserver  ttthreeparser
    ilisp              logtrend-visuapache     velocity
    infinity           logtrend-visuengine     werken.xpath
    kernel-patch-mppe  makeme                  xmix
    kvdr               masqmail                xtell
    lclint             mc-foo

These packages will get a brief chance to be reconsidered in the next few
days, but don't bet too heavily on them making it. From this point on,
packages that are still in testing that have serious, grave or critical
bugs that get removed probably won't get any second chances.

In that vein, I'm becoming increasingly confident in woody's release
readiness. So, to go out on a limb:

	Debian 3.0 (codenamed woody) will release on May 1st, 2002.

Actually, as always, it'll release when it's ready: if we find that the
software doesn't meet our expectations on April 30th, you'll find me on
the ground writhing in pain with leaves, bark and wood all over the place
[1].

Disclaimers aside, the things we've got left to finish of are these:

	* Boot-floppies need to be built for sparc and alpha

	* The people preparing release notes need to finish them off

	* The people preparing CD images need to make sure they're in
	  a state where they can be told "go" and come up with reliable,
	  final images for all eleven architectures a few hours later

	* apache needs to have its outstanding packaging bugs fixed
	* gimp1.2 needs to be fixed on alpha, even with the new pdl
	* hppa's db2/loader problem needs to be fixed
	* gs-common's license issues need to be resolved
	* mozilla's -fPIC problem needs to be fixed

	* Uploads need to be done for the following packages whose woody
	  versions have security problems:
		exim-tls
		icecast-server
		libax25
		lockvc
		nscd
		phpgroupware
		xfree86

	* A bunch of archive maintenance tasks need to be finished off
	  (giving the packages listed at the start of this mail a second
	  chance to get released, some further touchups with the crypto
	  in main transition, etc)

All these things will be well and truly finished by the 20th (two weeks
away), and should be finished early next week.

For those of you who're working on packages that are crucial for release
but don't have the testing<->unstable buffer to protect us from bugs
you introduce (in particular CD and boot-floppies people) please be
_incredibly_ conservative in _everything_ you do. If you can't prove
beyond any _possible_ question that what you're doing won't break things
that currently work, _do not change them_. No matter how much better it
might be for how many people.

Cheers,
aj

[0] Note: this reflects bugs in the Debian packages of this software; they
    may be Debian specific problems, or problems that've been fixed by
    the upstream authors. This caveat was brought to you by the Society
    for the Prevention of Irate Letters from Upstream Maintainers,
    and is being displayed with recycled photons.

[1] I'm going out on a limb, remember.

-- 
Anthony Towns <ajt@debian.org>
Woody Release Manager