All:

For those that have been lurking around the #gentoo-installer channel, 
you may have noticed a recent surge in activity. No, I'm serious. Really.

SM[1] has picked up the controller code and run with it. He's made some 
impressive progress, solidifying many of the ideas that we've received.

Additionally, two people, independent of each other, have come up with 
working front ends using the controller code. Now, the really cool thing 
is that both PC[2] and SM have built *working* front ends (of course, 
super-mega-supreme-alpha status and more of a proof of concept than a 
final product) that perform at least a simplistic install. The really 
cool thing is that this shows how developers can take advantage of the 
design of the code base to do things the way they want. This will allow 
for many different kinds of clients - automated, GUI, command line, 
curses, text - whatever you fancy. A huge thumbs up to these two guys 
who have put in some awesome effort.

There have been numerous refinements to other parts of the code 
including the client configuration, install profile class as well as the 
profiles themselves, and the controller described above.

Work and discussion continues on the partitioning code. This is going to 
be the death of us. Seriously.

Coordination with the Gentoo Release Engineering team has begun. The 
friendly RelEng folks reached out a helpful hand to us and offered to 
provide assistance with integrating with the livecds as well as planning 
for an initial release date. That's right, I said it: *A RELEASE DATE!* 
A (currently still) tentative date of the 2005.0 release of Gentoo has 
been set for the installer. Read it and weep (for joy or pain, you decide).

The previously mentioned developer PC has been providing bug fixes, 
suggestions, and improvements to the project as a whole. He's a great 
addition to our little community. Stay tuned for another announcement 
regarding this chap in the near future. (Hint hint, nudge, nudge.)

We are going to have another "live" meeting in #gentoo-installer 
(freenode) where we will go over status in real time, talk about the 
release date, goals, contributions, and coordination with the releng 
team as well as live cd requirements for the "official" client front end.

As always, feedback, comments, constructive criticism, patches, bug 
fixes, documentation authoring, and support are all welcome both on this 
list and the channel. Speak now or forever hold your potentially good 
ideas for improvements!

[1] Scott Myron - samyron on freenode.
[2] Preston Cody - codeman on freenode.
-- 
E. Sammer
esammer@g.o
Gentoo Linux - http://www.gentoo.org