The Debian project's maintainer, Luk Claes, announced in an email Saturday that he will freeze the "testing" or "Lenny" tree, in preparation for a new stable release of Debian Linux. On Claes's checklist for September 2008: "Release lenny!"
The freeze means that open source software developers have only a couple more days to package any applications that they want to be included in the next release of Debian -- and by extension, in the inner sanctum source lists of distributions such as Ubuntu that are based on it. After the freeze starts next week, Debian maintainers will no longer accept new packages, but instead will turn their attention to about 360 release-critical bugs.
In announcing the freeze, Claes outlined a series of high-priority tasks for Debian's 2,000 or so maintainers to focus on. These include:
Making pre- and post-install scripts safe for those hotrods (ah-hem, Ubuntu people) who point the /bin/sh symlink at dash instead of bash in order to shave a few seconds off of boot-up times
Updating Architecture status information -- Some eight of Debian's 12 architectures risk not getting included in the launch because no one is posting their status to the Debian Wiki
Get all packages to pass muster with the piuparts deb package tester/validator
Make sure packages can be "built twice in a row" (the "double compilation" test)
Tweak init.d scripts to support dependency-based init schemes such as Ubuntu's Upstart
Like all Debian releases, Lenny is named for a character in Pixar Animation's seminal movie, Toy Story. You may recall lenny as a pair of wind-up binoculars that are usually among the last toys to scuttle safely back to their "right place" prior to Andy's arrival.
"We only release it when it's ready," a memorable Debian project T-shirt proclaims. Originally intended as a knock against the artificial release schedules that marketing departments impose on commercial developers, the slogan has over time (so to speak) taken on another meaning, something like, "We'll release it when we're good and ready!" The previous 4.0 release was more than 21 months in the making.
In fairness, frequent stable releases have not been a priority for the project. That's because the distribution's powerful "apt-get dist-upgrade" script lets users easily upgrade systems "in place" to newer versions of the OS -- in addition to "stable," you can opt for "testing," "unstable," or "experimental."
That said, Debian's installation system is maintained only for the stable tree, so when stable releases start to stretch out too far apart, installing Debian on newer hardware starts to involve steeplechasing after various missing drivers that other kind users may have back-ported and posted for download. The distribution is most popular with experienced Linux users.
Claes's announcement can be found here. A more complete explanation of release goals may be found here.
