Debian采用两年的发行周期
July 27th, 2009
The Debian project has decided to adopt a new policy of time-based development freezes for future releases, on a two-year cycle. Freezes will from now on happen in the December of every odd year, which means that releases will from now on happen sometime in the first half of every even year. To that effect the next freeze will happen in December 2009, with a release expected in spring 2010. The project chose December as a suitable freeze date since spring releases proved successful for the releases of Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 (codenamed Etch
) and Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 (Lenny
).
Time-based freezes will allow the Debian Project to blend the predictability of time based releases with its well established policy of feature based releases. The new freeze policy will provide better predictability of releases for users of the Debian distribution, and also allow Debian developers to do better long-term planning. A two-year release cycle will give more time for disruptive changes, reducing inconveniences caused for users. Having predictable freezes should also reduce overall freeze time.
Since Debian’s last release happened on Feb. 14th 2009, there will only be approximately a one year period until its next release, Debian GNU/Linux 6.0 (codenamed Squeeze
). This will be a one-time exception to the two-year policy in order to get into the new time schedule. To accommodate the needs of larger organisations and other users with a long upgrade process, the Debian project commits to provide the possibility to skip the upcoming release and do a skip-upgrade straight from Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 (Lenny
) to Debian GNU/Linux 7.0 (not yet codenamed).
Although the next freeze is only a short time away, the Debian project hopes to achieve several prominent goals with it. The most important are multi-arch support, which will improve the installation of 32 bit packages on 64 bit machines, and an optimised boot process for better boot performance and reliability.
The new freeze policy was proposed and agreed during the Debian Project’s yearly conference, DebConf, which is currently taking place in Caceres, Spain. The idea was well received among the attending project members.
中文部分翻译：
Debian采用两年的发行周期
多数流行的发行版如Ubuntu、Fedora和Mandriva都采用固定时间的发行周期，向以发行周期漫长而著称的Debian也开始随大流，它正式宣布了发行日程表。与其它发行版通常采用的6个月时间不同，以稳定性闻名的Debian采用了两年的发行周期，单数年的12月份开发冻结，后一年的上半年发布正式版。 根据新的计划表，Debian 6.0（代号Squeeze）将于今年的12月冻结技术，明年上半年发布。考虑到Debian Lenny（5.0）是在2009年的情人节发布的，新计划表显然让Squeeze的开发有点紧迫，它将是两年周期的一次例外。对于需要长周期升级的大型 机构和用户，Debian项目也提供了跳过升级的可能性方案，允许他们直接从Debian GNU/Linux 5.0升级到Debian GNU/Linux 7.0 (尚未有开发代号)。虽然开发时间短暂，Debian仍然希望在Squeeze中实现几大目标，包括多架构支持，让系统的安装变得更轻松；以及优化启动进 程，改进启动性能和可靠性。