Alpha 1 freeze ahead

[Steve Langasek]

Dear Ubuntu developers,

The expected release date of Jaunty Alpha 1 is next Thursday, November 20.

Between end-of-year holidays and a late UDS this year (in December)[1], this
makes for an unusual start to the release cycle, with our first milestone
happening before the spec process is really even under way.  As such, the
targets for Alpha 1 are fairly modest, consisting mainly of merging the
installer for Jaunty and making sure things are an installable state.

But don't let that deter you if you have something great and immodest that
you're planning to dazzle us with this week!

We will continue to use a "soft freeze" for main for the Jaunty Alpha
milestones[2].  This means that developers are asked to refrain from
uploading packages between Tuesday and Thursday which don't bring us closer
to releasing the alpha, so that these days can be used for settling the
archive and fixing any remaining showstoppers.

The "list" of bugs targeted for alpha-1 can be found at:

  https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/jaunty/+bugs?field.milestone=2209

Per the policy described at <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RCBugTargetting>, this
list is used for tracking bugs that are blockers for the alpha 1 milestone -
so as you can see, the list is currently quite short.  If you know of other
bugs that should be considered blockers, please nominate them for release
and set the milestone target for those bugs.  If you have questions about
whether a bug should be considered a blocker, please contact a member of the
release team[3].

And of course, please also consider helping with the bugs already listed
there if you have the time.

Beyond that short list of bugs that are blockers for Alpha 1, we have those
bugs that are listed as release-critical for jaunty as a whole:

  https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/jaunty/+bugs

If you aren't among the small group of people who have milestoned bugs
assigned to you, please consider helping with those bugs, using your best
judgement with regard to the alpha freeze when uploading fixes.

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>.

Finally, if you know of new features in Jaunty that you think should be
highlighted for Alpha 1, let me or another member of the release team know
so that they can be added to the technical overview at
<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/JauntyJackalope/TechnicalOverview>.

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

[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UDSJaunty
[2] https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2008-January/000363.html
[3] https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-release/+members