Dear Porters, dear Developers, the latest update from the release masters indicate that the release of sarge is happening quite soon (perhaps by mid-September).[1] I'm happy with this development. This mail should write up some of the issues I see for amd64 and sarge, and I welcome feedback.
In my opinion, the decision how to proceed needs to be based on the following issues: 1. amd64 is currently not part of sid 2. to allow amd64 to enter the archive, at least the mirror scripts have to be adopted, and the technical questions by the ftp-masters have to be answered (however, these questions are not asked till now[2]). 3. the release of sarge is overdue; we should not risk a further delay. 4. base+standard packages will be frozen starting on August 1st.[1] 5. our users will profit if we can give them at least some support for amd64 (means: more than only i386). So, because of 1. and 4., there is already now no possiblity any more to add amd64 to sarge as a normal architecture. I also see no way to official release sarge r0 with amd64 as supported architecture. What may be possible in my opinion is to add amd64 as a "maybe broken"-architecture even to sarge (means: bugs only for that arch are non-RC per definition, and this arch doesn't count for package transits to sarge); on the other hand, porters uploads of amd64-binary packages even to t-p-u are relaxed till sarge r1 (or so). Via this way, amd64 packages are in the archive, even in the dist called sarge. Users don't need to use a development version of debian for amd64. We just don't claim that it's as hard tested as everything else. Going this way would prevent to delay the release of sarge. And: We keep the door wide open to add amd64 with sarge r1. If we want to follow this way, the remaining steps would be IMHO: 1. Get the remaining issues with the ftp- and mirror scripts fixed. 2. Ask the technical questions from the ftp-masters, and answer them. 3. Add amd64 to sid, and as "maybe broken"-arch to sarge. 4. Release sarge. Cheers, Andi [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2004/07/msg00016.html [2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/07/msg01344.html -- http://home.arcor.de/andreas-barth/ PGP 1024/89FB5CE5 DC F1 85 6D A6 45 9C 0F 3B BE F1 D0 C5 D1 D9 0C
