upcoming Hardy Alpha 1

[Steve Langasek]

Dear developers,

We have reached that point again in the Ubuntu release cycle where we step
back for a moment from our frenzied merging activity, blink away the
afterimages of debdiffs imprinted on our retinas, and make a conscious
effort to create an installable preview of the next release.  That's right,
it's time for Hardy Alpha 1.

The first alpha for Hardy Heron has been scheduled for next Thursday,
November 29.  As a result of discussions during and prior to UDS Boston,
the release team has opted not to do an archive freeze for this first
milestone, so that we can ourselves focus on bugfixing rather than on
reviewing the packages that others have uploaded.  Instead we are relying on
you, our faithful and trustworthy developers, to time your changes
appropriately so that we will be able to release an installable and (mostly)
usable alpha next Thursday.

Because there is no hard freeze for package uploads, we don't directly
control whether the alpha is ready on Thursday.  We are prepared for this
possibility, and if the archive is not ready for the alpha to happen on
Thursday we will evaluate the subsequent CD builds for suitability.  But we
can't wait for the alpha forever, so if we don't have a good set of CD
builds by the following Tuesday we will have to give up on this alpha and
re-evaluate this freezeless approach.

In short, this means implementing your own freeze on *your* side of the
network, and not uploading changes between Tuesday and Thursday that aren't
needed to get us closer to releasing the alpha.  If you have important
outstanding merges in process, please do them before Tuesday, so that
Tuesday-Thursday can be used for settling the archive and fixing any
showstoppers for the alpha.

Speaking of showstoppers, the list of bugs targetted for alpha-1 can be
found here: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+milestone/hardy-alpha-1  This
milestone is intended to be used for tracking bugs that must be fixed in
order for the alpha release to happen.  If you have doubts about whether a
bug should block the alpha, please err on the side of caution by using the
milestone for the bug so that the release team can review it.  Please also
consider helping with the bugs already listed there if you have the time.

Please also help us to get the archive in a consistent state for the alpha,
as described on
<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDevelopment/PackageArchive#Consistency>, as
this is important for both installation and upgrade testing.

Thanks,
-- 
Steve Langasek
On behalf of the Ubuntu release team