Debian: Wheezy still has many critical bugs

A month after the freeze, the Debian Release Team has released an initial, fairly sobering report on Debian 7.0 Wheezy. In his email, Adam Barratt points out the large number of release-critical bugs – there should be fewer than 300, but almost 600 are listed in the database. There were also about 600 bugs in February 2010, a month before the freeze planned for the current Debian 6.0 Squeeze, leading the Release Team to push back that freeze date by six months.

Packages still marked as unstable when Debian Wheezy's freeze started on June 30 were exempt from the freeze, giving developers another month to directly submit patches. After today, however, those packages will also be frozen so that the Debian maintainers can have a better overview of the new changes.

Wheezy's release date is still completely up in the air. It most likely won't happen in 2012, since more than six months usually go by between the freeze and the release. Spring 2013 is possible, but considering the large number of release-critical bugs, Wheezy could very well take even longer.

However, there have been no delays in choosing a name for Wheezy's successor. Following Debian tradition, the Release Team used the first status report after the freeze to announce that Debian 8.0 would be named after Jessie, the yodelling cowgirl from Toy Story 2.

(djwm)