Weekly 0.17 release status - new dates

[Ian Clatworthy]

Hi,

This is the weekly summary on the status of 0.17. After discussing the
original dates with Robert earlier this week, I'd like to keep the Jun 4
cutoff for general check-ins but push the final target date to Jun 18.
The new proposed dates are:

* Jun 4 - feature freeze begins
* Jun 12 - Release Candidate 1
* Jun 18 - ship date

Note that Jun 11 is a public holiday here in Oz so RC1 will be packaged
on a Tuesday, not a Monday as might be expected otherwise.

These dates mean the following:

1. The trunk (bzr.dev) is open for general check-ins until 4/Jun/07.

2. Between Jun 4 and Jun 12, only trivial fixes should be committed to
   the trunk. Regression found in this time may need to be backed out
   unless a fix can be safely delivered.

3. On Jun 12, a branch will be created for 0.17 and the trunk will be
   reopened for general check-ins.

See http://bazaar-vcs.org/FeatureFreeze for more details on the rules we
adopt during the feature freeze period.

With a few people travelling or catching up on study commitments post
the London sprint, it has been a relatively quiet week on the mailing
list. Nevertheless, it's been pleasing to see good progress being made
in some important areas, e.g. Aaron's work on speeding up merge and
clarifications to the tutorial. Thanks to *everyone* who has submitted
patches. Keep them coming ...

FWIW, my immediate focus is cleaning up some patches (following feedback
from reviewers) and getting my head around the higher priority bugs
registered in Launchpad. By the time feature freeze begins, I want to
have a good feel for what bugs are really serious and some gut feel for
how big & risky each one is, i.e. whether it is feasible & sensible to
target them next week. If a bug is *really* annoying you, now is a good
time to bring it to my attention. The best way to make that happen,
short of submitting a patch, is to get it confirmed by someone and
ensure that its priority reflects its seriousness. Marking every bug as
'Critical' won't make you friends. But ensuring that bug reports have
enough information to explain why an issue impacts you so much will.

If anyone has any feedback, questions or suggestions on any of the
above, please let me know. This is my first attempt at being Release
Manager for Bazaar so I'm undoubtedly going to need some gentle coaching
along the way ...

Cheers,
Ian C.