Eclipse Fedora Packager: Call for Testers and Contributors

[Severin Gehwolf]

Hi Fedora Packagers,

<pitch>
I would like to bring a new Eclipse plug-in to your
attention: Eclipse Fedora Packager[1]

It's a tool which can help speeding up your Fedora
packaging work :-)

In a nutshell, it offers similar features as the command-line
client fedpkg, but with a GUI. Here's a list of its current
features (more to come):

- Conveniently clone Fedora Git projects, switch branches
  etc.
- RPM-spec-file editor with syntax highlighting,
  auto-completion and changelog support (<Ctrl>+<Alt>+C
  keyboard shortcut)
- Download source files and upload new source files
- Prepare local builds (execute %prep section of your
  spec-file)
- Create source RPM files based on current spec-file
- Execute local builds
- Push builds to Koji (the Fedora build system)
- Mock builds
- Push Bodhi updates (the Fedora updates system)
- Eclipse Git support (via EGit)

If those features cover all (most) tasks you usually carry
out when packaging your software for Fedora, Eclipse Fedora
Packager may be a tool for you to look into.

Still not sure? It might be the right tool for your Fedora
packaging if:

- You prefer GUI tools over command-line-clients
- You are already familiar with Eclipse or some other IDE
- You are a developer and you use Eclipse on a daily basis
- You have never packaged something for Fedora, but
  would like to do so.
- You don't know much about how software gets into Fedora
  but need to get it packaged for it.
- Your main goal is to get your software packaged for
  Fedora as opposed to learning a lot of tooling.

Sounds interesting? Want to try it out? Here's what you need
to do (please note that Eclipse Fedora Packager will officially
come with Fedora 14 for the first time):

If you have a F14 box, "yum install eclipse-fedorapackager".
Then fire up Eclipse and follow instructions of our user guide:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Eclipse_Fedora_Packager_User_Guide

On F13 (I'm using it) and older (untested) you need to install
some rawhide packages. This is what I usually do:

1.) Install dependencies (non-rawhide):
    $ yum install eclipse eclipse-changelog eclipse-rpm-editor \
        fedora-release-rawhide fedora-packager
2.) Install eclipse-fedorapackager and eclipse-egit from rawhide
    $ yum install --enablerepo=rawhide eclipse-fedorapackger
3.) Follow our user guide[2] for information on how to get started
    using the plug-in.

The latest version of eclipse-fedorapackager is 0.1.8 (in rawhide).
Here's a link to today's build:
https://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=201275

Feedback, testing, bug reports, contributions are very much
appreciated. Our Trac instance is here (use your FAS to login):
https://fedorahosted.org/eclipse-fedorapackager/

If you have questions, run into problems or would be interested in
contributing please let me know:

email: sgehwolf AT redhat DOT com (this list is preferred)
IRC: my nick is "jerboaa" (e.g. #fedora-devel or #fedora-java)

I'll get back to you as soon as possible.

In any case, let us know what you think ;-)

</pitch>

Thanks,
Severin

[1] https://fedorahosted.org/eclipse-fedorapackager/ (Trac/wiki)
[2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Eclipse_Fedora_Packager_User_Guide