devel-announce January 2009

devel-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org

7 participants
14 discussions

Status of the Alpha
by Jesse Keating 31 Jan '09

31 Jan '09

I have bad news, and some good news. Due to either over use of kickstart, or a subtle difference in my home composes vs the composes done in our Phoenix colo, the freeze done last week turns out to not be a good package set. There is a bug that manifests itself the first time a checkbox is checked in the anaconda gui. I never ran into this with my testing, and so we thought things were good for a refresh. We only discovered the bug while testing composes after the refresh on Tuesday. We were unable to determine the root cause of the above bug, however we did discover that later rawhide trees (like say the tree from yesterday) did not have this bug, a quick test compose was made and tested, and found to be suitable. We decided to refresh the tag again all the way up to rawhide-20090129. Unfortunately the testing of i386 and ppc didn't uncover a bug with x86_64 early in anaconda, regarding executing some iscsiadm calls. These only appear to happen on x86_64 in graphical mode. Text mode is fine. I tried VNC, only to find out that vnc caused an early crash of anaconda when booting over the network. This particular vnc bug did not exist in the earlier freeze tag or was otherwise undetected. So now we're at a point with a critical bug that existed throughout our freeze (gtk checkbox) thus no good point to fall back to, and while this bug is fixed in later rawhide builds (fixed by an unknown component, so no idea what we could cherry pick to the old freeze tag), newer rawhide builds introduce new bugs above. Then I tested today's rawhide, x86_64, gui, and found that it does not have the iscsi bug. I then proceeded to do a full iso compose from this package set and have continued to do testing (of the actual isos and bits) and continue to find them suitable. So now I think we have a golden tree, although I can only test on my limited hardware and KVM. Such little testing has bitten us before, but since this time I'm testing the actual bits I feel better about the limited coverage, particularly because it's Alpha. I'm going to stage the bits on the master mirror, and try to con some other folks into testing the isos I've generated. With luck we'll be able to release it to mirrors tomorrow and have a chance at things being ready for Tuesday. Any further issues or an inability to get a second opinion in time though will incur a slip of the Alpha release. Thanks for your patience, and help. -- Jesse Keating Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature! identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating

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Reminder: Do not use trademarks in Summary or Description
by Tom Callaway 29 Jan '09

29 Jan '09

Please, if you're a packager, take a moment and go read this: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Guidelines#Trademarks_in_Summary_o… After talking with Red Hat Legal about how we should be handling trademarks in package summaries and descriptions, we came to the conclusion that it would be far easier (and less risky for Red Hat) if we did not use "(TM)" or "(R)" notations at all. This does not mean that you can use trademarks freely, you still need to be careful in how you use them. When in doubt, try not to use it. If you have questions, you can either email me or fedora-legal(a)redhat.com. Thanks in advance, Tom Callaway, Fedora Legal

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2009-01-29 - Fedora Test Day - Text-mode install removal
by James Laska 27 Jan '09

27 Jan '09

Greetings, Okay now that I got your attention. Don't worry, text-mode is not going away. But in order to simplify maintenance it will be greatly reduced in terms of functionality. I'd like to invite testers and users to join #fedora-qa this Thursday, January 29, 2009. Test efforts will focus on: * anaconda text-mode simplification * Fedora 11 Alpha Come with questions and/or suggested test areas. More details will be posted to https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Test_Days/2009-01-29. Hope to see you there, James

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Fedora 11 Alpha Status
by Jesse Keating 27 Jan '09

27 Jan '09

Last night we refreshed the alpha freeze (see koji tag f11-alpha-2). This will be the content we're using for the Alpha, provided our testing is successful. Anything else added will only be for critical path items, that is the path to install, boot, obtain network, and update. If a reasonable workaround is found for a problem in that path, the work around will be advertised rather than respinning the Alpha. Today's rawhide is not functional due to some changes in createrepo/yum. Newer builds of these packages have been made and tested and added to the new alpha tag, so tomorrow's rawhide is a bit closer to what the Alpha will be. We hope to have the alpha fully composed by midday tomorrow and on its way to mirrors for staging. I'll announce when this happens. Release date is still planned for Tuesday, February 3rd. Thanks all! -- Jesse Keating Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature! identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating

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[LONG] The fonts SIG irregular status report
by Nicolas Mailhot 24 Jan '09

24 Jan '09

Hi all, Since Fedora 11 Alpha is quickly approaching, here is a much-delayed edition of the fonts SIG irregular status report. I should probably have done one for Fedora 10 release, but (silly me) expected then that the new font packaging guidelines would be adopted quickly. After all, they only reworded existing rules and added material already presented and discussed on the fonts and devel lists. Of course various instances decided to celebrate F10 by taking a break, then there was some bike-shedding, then we had the Christmas vacations, then FUDCON and more bike-shedding. Live and learn. At least after being hammered to death the result is clear and clean. Anyway, to the report. ◾◾◾ New fonts packaging guidelines ◾◾◾ After much anguish and unexpected developments FPC and FESCO approved the complete set of fonts packaging changes that we had submitted. https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2009-January/msg00007… The end result is: — a completed and clarified policy page http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:FontsPolicy — two new packaging templates http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Simple_fonts_spec_template http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fonts_spec_template_for_multiple_fonts — and a helper package with rpm macros, documentation, plus fontconfig and spec templates http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_fonts_policy_package ◾◾◾ Distribution-wide font auditing and repackaging ◾◾◾ Some innocent repoqueries revealed a distressing number of source packages (>130) that made us ship fonts while completely ignoring our previous fonts packaging guidelines and existing licensing rules. So applying new font guidelines twists quickly turned into distribution-wide operation. — Its advancement is now tracked in: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=477044 — A (long) FAQ was published to help packagers with no fonts experience: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Shipping_fonts_in_Fedora_(FAQ) — To make sure documentation, QA and other groups are aware and help implement the changes they've been proposed as a Fedora 11 feature: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Repackaging_of_Fedora_fonts ◾◾◾ Wishlist status ◾◾◾ Our wishlist stood at 56 entries for last report. It has now reached the 76 entries watermark. The current fonts packagers are clearly unable to cope with Fedora demands, fresh blood is needed before it moves into 3-digits land. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:Font_wishlist At the same time the respected lwn.net is running a front page article listing more indispensable free or open fonts, some of them being neither in Fedora nor in our wishlist yet. http://lwn.net/Articles/315872/ (subscription required right now, will go free in less than a week) Volunteers to package those or at least add them to our wishlist would be welcome. The free and open font landscape is really moving now, and the quality and breadth of its font offerings is now a distribution differentiator. ◾◾◾ Review status ◾◾◾ At this time there are no un-reviewed font packages in Fedora bugzilla. However, several reviews have been open for quite a long time with their requesters not acting on review comments. Please do respond to review comments. Reviewing packages is tedious ungrateful work and getting no response after one is demotivating. ◾◾◾ New packages ◾◾◾ Ignoring renamings ctan-musixtex-fonts, dustin-dustismo-roman-fonts, dustin-dustismo-sans-fonts, hanazono-fonts, google-droid-sans-fonts, google-droid-sans-mono-font, google-droid-serif-fonts, serafettin-cartoon-fonts, and unikurd-web-font are now available in the repository. The most user-visible of those are probably the Droid fonts, but Dustimo had been waited for a long time. Several other fonts previously hidden deep inside apps have now been exposed as part of the ongoing F11 auditing and repackaging. The complete set of changes is documented as usual: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fonts_inclusion_history Several new packagers worked on those and on other packages not pushed yet and I want to thank them publicly for their contribution to a better Fedora. ◾◾◾ Web font surveys ◾◾◾ Fedora 10 shipped with an openjdk plugin that should be complete enough to run web font surveys. There is no reason left for Fedora users not to participate in them, and help web designers select fonts that work well with Fedora browsers. Please take the time to run those: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Linux_fonts_on_the_web:_CSS_and_font_surveys ◾◾◾ Better fonts whiteboard ◾◾◾ The desktop team has added a whiteboard page to the wiki to help identify the software changes needed to improve Fedora fonts and text handling. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Desktop/Whiteboards/BetterFonts Please contribute comments and complements to this page to help Fedora get better. ◾◾◾ Font autoinstallation ◾◾◾ Rumors on irc are that the feature is advancing fast. Hopefully we'll have finished cleaning up our font packages before they need to be rebuild to add auto-install metadata. Automating this operation requires clean packages free of historic cruft. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/AutomaticFontInstallation And that's all for this issue, thank you for reading it to its end. Regards, -- Nicolas Mailhot

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Stale Feature Pages
by John Poelstra 21 Jan '09

21 Jan '09

Hello Feature Owners, With the Alpha Freeze starting yesterday (2009-01-20) we still have a few feature pages in need of an update. Several have not been updated for a month or more. This information is important as the Documentation team starts to prepare the release notes for the Alpha Release. Please make sure the information listed on your feature page is current and then update the "Last Updated" date--even if you haven't changed any information on the page. If any of the features below remain unchanged by January 28, 2009, I will propose them to FESCo to dropped from the Fedora 11 Feature list. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Policy/Dropping https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/20SecondStartup https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Fingerprint https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Multiseat https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Presto https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/TightVNC https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/VolumeControl Thank you for your help, John

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[Guidelines Change] Changes to the Packaging Guidelines
by Tom Callaway 20 Jan '09

20 Jan '09

As usual, the Fedora Packaging Committee has been busy adding and amending the Fedora Packaging Guidelines. Specifically: The Packaging Guidelines describing desktop-file-install have been changed. Specifically, new packages no longer need to set "vendor" (existing packages must keep using "vendor" for the lifetime of that package). https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Guidelines#desktop-file-install_us… The Packaging Guidelines have been changed to reflect the fact that Fedora packages must adhere to the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS), with the exception of libexecdir (as specified in the GNU Coding Standards) and /usr/target for cross-compilers. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Guidelines#layout The Font Packaging Guidelines have been changed. There is a new section which covers Font Package Layout: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:FontsPolicy#Package_layout_for_fon… In addition, there is a new set of Guidelines covering the naming of Font Packages: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:FontsPolicy#Naming Also, there is a new set of Guidelines covering the technical implementation of Font Packages: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:FontsPolicy#Technical_implementati… The Eclipse Plugin Guidelines were updated to reflect Eclipse 3.4: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:EclipsePlugins The Ruby Guidelines were updated to better handle situations where a Ruby Gem includes an extension library written in C: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Ruby#Ruby_Gem_with_extension_libra… These guidelines (and changes) were approved by the Fedora Packaging Committee (FPC) and ratified by FESCo. Many thanks to Andrew Overholt, Mamoru Tasaka, Nicolas Mailhot, and all of the members of the FPC and FESCo, for assisting in drafting, refining, and passing these guidelines. As a reminder: The Fedora Packaging Guidelines are living documents! If you find something missing, incorrect, or in need of revision, you can suggest a draft change. The procedure for this is documented here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Committee#GuidelineChangeProcedure Thanks, ~spot

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Fedora 11 Feature Update Request
by John Poelstra 16 Jan '09

16 Jan '09

Just a quick reminder that the Alpha freeze is approaching on Tuesday, January 20, 2009, and all accepted Fedora 11 feature pages should be current on that date. These updates are important and helpful to a number of people inside and outside of Fedora and starting with preparation of the release notes by the documentation team. If you have feature listed here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/11/FeatureList please update your page. And... if you want to submit a new feature page you have until March 3, 2009, to submit a feature page and complete the feature. A list of partially completed feature pages is here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:FeaturePageIncomplete If anyone has any questions about the feature process feel free to contact me directly or ask here on the list. Thanks, John

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Fedora 11 Alpha Freeze one week away
by Jesse Keating 13 Jan '09

13 Jan '09

Next Tuesday we will be doing a non-blocking freeze of rawhide to be the basis of Fedora 11 Alpha. Only targeted fixes will be pulled into the Alpha tag after the freeze. Rawhide itself will continue on as to not disrupt development. The freeze tag will be used to create something that is installable in most situations and the alpha release will serve as a known good starting point for users wishing to start Fedora 11 testing and development. Please try to keep your changes conservative over the next week as to avoid massively breaking rawhide while we try to snapshot. Thanks! -- Jesse Keating Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature! identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating

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Fedora 11 release name
by Paul W. Frields 10 Jan '09

10 Jan '09

The Fedora 11 release name is: Leonidas The full GPG-signed message from our election coordinator, Nigel Jones, is attached. Thank you to the community for their suggestions, Josh Boyer and the Board for their work on additional diligence searches, and Nigel Jones for setting up the voting. -- Paul W. Frields http://paul.frields.org/ gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233 5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717 http://redhat.com/ - - - - http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/ irc.freenode.net: stickster @ #fedora-docs, #fedora-devel, #fredlug

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devel-announce January 2009