Jessie Release ==============
We now have a target release date of Saturday the 25th of April. We have checked with core teams, and this seems to be acceptable for everyone. This means we are able to begin the final preparations for a release of Debian 8 - "Jessie".
The intention is only to lift the date if something really critical pops up that is not possible to handle as an errata, or if we end up technically unable to release that weekend.
Please keep in mind that we intend to have a quiet period from Saturday the 18th of April. Bug fixes must be *in Jessie* before then.
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/03/msg00016.html
LAVA is in Jessie without any issues and releases after 2014.09 are in experimental. Shortly after 25th April, the version of LAVA in experimental at the time (or the pending production release, depending on timing) will be uploaded to unstable and subsequently migrate into the new Debian testing: Stretch. (Stretch is the purple octopus from Toy Story 2). Shortly after the release, stable-backports will become available. Once LAVA migrates into stretch, a backport can be made to stable-backports. So instances can stay on Debian 8.0 Jessie (stable) and remain up to date with production using stable-backports.
Around the 18th April, Wheezy will become oldstable. There is no LAVA support in Wheezy.
What you need to do now ===================
Now is a good time to check the apt sources of *all* your Debian boxes, including VMs:
$ cat /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/*
example apt source using testing: deb [arch=arm64] http://mirror.bytemark.co.uk/debian/ testing main
example apt source using jessie: deb [arch=arm64] http://mirror.bytemark.co.uk/debian/ jessie main
For all boxes with apt sources pointing at official Debian mirrors, the following items need to be considered:
0: If your apt source is testing then the next upgrade after 25th April will move you to Stretch. You will receive updates to LAVA automatically, typically after a 5 day migration delay from unstable.
1: If your apt source is jessie, then the next upgrade after the 25th will move you to stable and subsequently a point release of stable. You will need backports to stay up to date with LAVA.
2: IMPORTANT: The first few weeks after a stable release can be *chaotic* in the unstable suite with so many new uploads - the release team try to protect the testing suite in this case, stretch, but some breakage can be expected, even in testing (stretch). The way to manage this is to be sensible about *which* boxes you upgrade during this time.
3: It is common for a stable release to be quickly followed by a point release, this isn't scheduled yet but is likely to be between the release and DebConf15 in August, most probably some time in June or July. LAVA is not likely to be a candidate for a point release update, updates will continue via stable-backports.
4: If you have both testing and jessie in your apt sources on a single machine, then unless you are also using manually configured apt pinning, that box will upgrade using the testing source and move to stretch as per point 0.
Backports of LAVA will start to become available for jessie via stable-backports shortly after LAVA packages migrate into stretch for the first time. There will be an inevitable delay of as much as 10 days between a production release and that release arriving in stable-backports. For LAVA lab boxes, there will continue to be the images.validation.linaro.org/production-repo which will allow those boxes to stay on jessie without the delay in waiting for backports. This is how validation.linaro.org will be updated.
So, consider each of your boxes and decide *now* how these are to migrate. Changing between testing and jessie now is safe - which one is in place after 25th April 2015 is what matters.
More details of configuring stable-backports will be available once stable-backports is open for uploads. For now, look at backports.debian.org
A new install of Debian 8.0 Jessie after 25th April will use an apt source of jessie and will behave in the same manner as per point 1, typically adding stable-backports support as well.
The LAVA team expect to support jessie via backports for the lifetime of jessie as stable - once stretch gets to a point where a release freeze is being considered (probably around summer next year, 2016) we'll look at whether jessie can continue to be supported as "oldstable" into 2017.