Mingw-w64 has finally been approved by Red Hat legal!

Thu Feb 23 10:24:14 UTC 2012

Hi,

2012-02-22 23:37 keltezéssel, Erik van Pienbroek írta:
> Hi everybody,
>
> Today we received word from Red Hat Legal that the mingw-w64 toolchain
> is no longer subject to any known legal blocks. This means that (after a
> year of waiting) we finally can continue with the introduction of the
> mingw-w64 toolchain in Fedora!

it's very good news!

> The timing of this legal approval is a bit too late to get the mingw-w64
> toolchain introduced in Fedora 17 as the guidelines state that no new
> features should be added to the distro anymore after the Feature Freeze
> (which was two weeks ago). However, we (Kalev, Kai and me) think that it
> is realistic to get the mingw-w64 toolchain introduced in Fedora 17
> before the Beta development freeze (March 20). After all, it would be a
> shame if we'd have to wait until October/November while we already have
> everything ready. The use of mingw-w64 has already been tested and
> improved for over a year thanks to various contributors (you rock!) so
> we think it's safe enough to introduce mingw-w64 even though we missed
> the Fedora 17 Feature Freeze.
>
> So where do we stand now?
>
> We currently have 114 mingw packages in Fedora rawhide. Out of these 114
> packages 17 packages are already using the new naming scheme (with the
> package name prefix 'mingw-' instead of 'mingw32-').
>
> In the testing repository there currently are 75 packages (out of the
> 114 packages in Fedora) which are already ported to the new packaging
> guidelines and have both win32 and win64 support. That's about 2/3rd of
> all mingw packages which are currently in Fedora
>
> What's the current short-term plan?
>
> Kalev and I have come up with a list of tasks which we need to get done
> before March 20 to make the introduction of mingw-w64 happen in Fedora
> 17:
>
> - Get a separate F17 buildroot from rel-eng
> - Finish the core toolchain package reviews
> - Import the new packages in git (both master and f17 branches) and
>   build them in f17-mingw koji buildroot
> - Perform a mass rebuild of all mingw packages in f17-mingw
> - Check if everything builds/works fine
> - Create an bodhi update ticket which includes the 5 toolchain packages
>   and all rebuilt packages (more than 100)
> - Rawhide automatically inherits the new builds here
> - (Optionally) Get the blessing of FESCO to allow this late feature in
> Fedora 17
> - File a ticket to have the FPC activate the new packaging guidelines
> - Profit!
>
> Kalev already started with reviewing the mingw-headers package. There
> currently are three other packages which still need reviewing:
> mingw-binutils: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=673786
> mingw-gcc: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=673788
> mingw-crt: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=673792
> Any help with those remaining three package reviews is really
> appreciated!!
>
> Once these toolchain packages are reviewed and approved the rest should
> be a pretty easy flight which should only take a couple of days. The
> package reviews is the most critical part here so we need to get that
> resolved as soon as possible.
>
> Okay, so what about the longer-term plan?
>
> Once the toolchain packages are available in Fedora 17 we can start with
> merging all the changes from the testing repository back to Fedora. For
> the 17 packages which are currently in Fedora and are already using the
> new package naming scheme this is a straightforward commit and build.
>
> The other remaining 97 packages need to be renamed first before win64
> support can be added. In order to get a package renamed in Fedora one
> has to file a review request and have somebody else perform a complete
> review of it. As we all know that this is really time consuming job,
> especially for 97 different packages. We could try to ask FESCO for an
> exception to this package rename procedure for all these 97 packages or
> a subset of them (based on what the maintainers of the packages in
> question desire). My recommendation would be to file a mass rename
> request to FESCO for the 75 packages which are already ported to the new
> packaging guidelines in the testing repo. Nothing is carved in stone
> about this subject yet, but we can already start a discussion about this
> subject now. The earliest moment when this all will be relevant is when
> all short-term goals are achieved before March 20.
>
>
> I would also like to take a moment to thank all the people who have been
> involved in the development and testing of the mingw-w64 based packages
> in the testing repository up to now. Thanks to you guys the mingw-w64
> based packages in the testing repository are in a great shape right now
> and we can make the transition relatively painless. In alphabetical
> order here are the people who I would like to thank for their help in
> testing and development:
>
> Andreas Bierfert
> Boszormenyi Zoltan
> Christophe Fergeau
> Dominik Schmidt
> Dov Grobgeld
> Jay Higley
> Kai Tietz
> Kalev Lember
> Levente Farkas
> Marc-André Lureau
> Michael Cronenworth
> Mikkel Kruse Johnsen
> Paweł Forysiuk
> Richard Jones
> Tim Mayberry
>
> I hope I didn't forget any one :)

You didn't forget my name but writing it internationally
(i.e. first name or "christian name" first then family name)
would make me last in the list. :-)

Best regards,
Zoltán

>
> Kind regards,
>
> Erik van Pienbroek
>
>
>
>
>
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