Weekly 0.18 release status

[Ian Clatworthy]

Hi,

This is the weekly summary on the status of 0.18. Following the feedback
to my earlier RFC, I'll be Release Manager given I'm keen and no-one
else volunteered. :-)

<CALL-TO-ARMS>
If you have something on the review list which is merged already or
obsolete, please see Aaron about getting it off the list if you don't
know how to. The list can be found here:
http://bundlebuggy.aaronbentley.com/?selected=pending

With just a few days (see below) until FeatureFreeze begins, can I
please ask the more experienced developers to FOCUS ON REVIEWS RIGHT NOW
so that contributors have a better chance of getting their work included
in this release. Thanks to everyone who has submitted patches so far. If
you're waiting on a review, please bug us on IRC or the list! We're not
ignoring you, though we may have been focusing on other things recently,
e.g. the performance road-map.
</CALL-TO-ARMS>

Things I particularly want to see in 0.18:

* performance
  - faster merge & bundle (thanks Aaron)
  - John's Pyrex stuff included
  - reduced connection work from Vincent and others

* usability:
  - patches from Kent Gibson and Daniel Watkins' landed if we can
  - others???

* a really clean test suite
  - the speed improvements are great!
  - several other improvements are (almost) through review
  - BUT ...
  - the 'strace sigquit' issue is back :-(
  - some noise/warnings introduced in 0.16 or 0.17 to be cleaned up

* quality:
  - things look ok here????
  - please mark urgent bugs against 0.18 in Launchpad ASAP

With the exception of the final ship date that can vary, we generally
follow a time-driven development model. The dates for 0.18 are:

* Jul 3 - feature freeze begins
* Jul 10 - Release Candidate 1
* Jul 17 - approximate ship date

These dates mean the following:

1. The trunk (bzr.dev) is open for general check-ins until 3/Jul/07.
   Practically, that's midnight on the 2/July/07 for those on US-like
   timezones.

2. Between Jul 3 and Jul 10, 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 Jul 10, a branch will be created for 0.18 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.

If anyone has any feedback, questions or suggestions on any of the
above, please let me know.

Cheers,
Ian C.