Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 293[1]. The FWN 293 is a live news stream of the mid April 2012.
The lead news of the week comes from the major announcement, development, the Trade Press and Fedora Marketing, and Security Advisories symmetrically. The starting news is the Changes to the Packaging Guidelines through Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Beta followed by Fedora 17 Beta thread.
One of the breaking news of this month is Fedora 18 Release name voting and Poll for whether to continue naming releases. Meantime, the leading news is the Fedora 17 for Power Alpha by David Aquilina. In this issue, the community can get details of the Fedora 17 Beta Go/No-Go Meeting, Round 3, Wednesday, April 11, @17:00 Eastern and the declared GOLD for the community (the Fedora 17 Beta is declared GOLD).
Another lead news on Trade Press and Fedora Marketing giants of Fedora is that Fedora Project has announced the release of the first and only beta version of Fedora 17, the final version of which is due for publication on 22 May. An outstanding review has been an eye catching topic titled as the beefy Fedora could use a dash of miracle whip by Jason Brokes which sounds harmonious with the news HealthCheck Fedora: Where's the beef?
Security beat, meantime, deals and publishes several security notes at the Security Advisories Beat.
Recent issues of FWN are now being published to Fedora Insight[2]. Insight offers RSS features, multimedia capabilities and more, beyond the mailshot/wiki FWN you have come to know and love. Try it out, and we'd love to hear your feedback!
Fedora Project is the right place for you and you can simply show your interest in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see our 'join' page[3]. We welcome reader feedback: news@lists.fedoraproject.org
FWN Editorial Team: Pascal Calarco, Adam Williamson, Rashadul Islam
Fedora Announcements are the place where you can find the major coverage from the Fedora Project including general announcements[1], development announcements[2] and Fedora Events[3].
Contributing Writer: Rashadul Islam
Tom Callaway[1] on Thu Apr 12 20:57:29 UTC 2012 announced[2],
"A bundling exception for boost within Passenger was granted, due to the intrusive nature of the forked changes, the efforts of the maintainer to merge as many of them as possible into the upstream boost source tree, and the visible efforts of the upstream to keep the bundled copy of boost in sync with the current boost releases.
The package must also include a Requires: bundled(boost) = $VERSION where $VERSION is the boost version being bundled.
Packages which have SysV initscripts that contain 'non-standard service commands' (commands besides start, stop, reload, restart, or try-restart) must convert those commands into standalone helper scripts. Systemd does not support non-standard unit commands.
A section was added to the systemd Packaging Guidelines page with a link to the Tmpfiles.d Packaging Guidelines page, since systemd uses Tmpfiles.d.
The Ruby Packaging Guidelines were almost completely rewritten. If you maintain ruby packages in Fedora, we advise that you review the new guidelines.
An informational note about Software Collection macros in Fedora Packages was added:
The guidelines relating to PIE and Hardened Packages were updated. Now, if your package meets the following critera you MUST enable the PIE compiler flags:
keep running until the machine is rebooted, not start on demand and quit on idle.
Rules involving appropriate scripting within Fedora Package spec files were added to the Guidelines:
The section in the systemd guidelines covering EnvironmentFiles and support for /etc/sysconfig files was revised for clarification.
The Ada Packaging Guidelines were updated for new rules on packaging source files and updated macros.
The section of the Packaging Guidelines describing the "bootstrapping" binary exception was amended for clarification:
The section of the Packaging Guidelines describing Duplication of system libraries was amended to clarify the exceptions for Javascript and parallel stacks.
These guidelines (and changes) were approved by the Fedora Packaging Committee (FPC).
Many thanks to Kevin Fenzi, Bohuslav Kabrda, Brett Lentz, Marcela Mašláňová, Bill Nottingham, Vít Ondruch, Mamoru Tasaka, and all of the members of the FPC, 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: [14]
Thanks"
Dennis Gilmore[1] on Tue Apr 17 14:17:02 UTC 2012 announced in two thread[2][3],
"Look, up in the sky! It's a bird, it's a plane, it's... the Beta release of Beefy Miracle! Flying 'round the world at the speed of the intertubes, delivering progress, mustard, and freedom to the masses.
We are delighted to announce the availability of the Beta release of Fedora 17. Want to get a taste of the future? Download it now:
The Beta release is the last important milestone of Fedora 17. Only critical bug fixes will be pushed as updates leading to the general release of Fedora 17 in May. We invite you to join us in making Fedora 17 a solid release by downloading, testing, and providing your valuable feedback.
Of course, this is a beta release, meaning that some problems may still be lurking. A list of the problems we already know about is found at the Common F17 bugs page, seen here:
This release of Fedora includes a variety of features both over and under the hood that show off the power and flexibility of the advancing state of free software. Here are just a few of the new features:
On the desktop: GNOME 3.4 introduces many user experience improvements, including new search capabilities in the activities overview, improved themes, and enhancements to the Documents and Contacts applications. A new application, GNOME-boxes, provides easy access to virtual machines. Additionally, GIMP 2.8, the newest version of the GNU Image Manipulation Program, brings new improvements such as single-window mode, layer groups, and on-canvas editing.
For developers: You never sausage a great array of development tools! Fedora 17 includes a pre-release of Juno, the release of the Eclipse SDK expected in June 2012. Java 7 (and OpenJDK 7) is the default Java runtime and Java build toolset, and GCC 4.7.x is now the primary compiler in Fedora. Other language refreshes include shipping Ruby 1.9.3, the latest stable version of the Ruby language, PHP 5.4, the latest PHP stack, and Erlang has also been updated to the R15 release.
Under the hood, and in the cloud: The Cluster stack in Fedora includes numerous and significant updates for both high availability and load-balancing applications. Fedora 17 utilizes Linux kernel 3.3, with improved btrfs and ext4 filesystems, GMA (poulsbo) graphics and Broadcom wireless chipset support, and numerous other bug fixes and enhancements. Firewalld is now the default firewall solution in Fedora, providing dynamic firewall configuration capabilities. Finally, OpenStack, a collection of services that can be used to set up and run cloud compute and storage infrastructure, has been updated to the latest release, 2012.1 (Essex).
And that's only the beginning. A more complete list and details of all the new features in Fedora 17 is available here:
We have nightly composes of alternate spins available here:
For more information on common and known bugs, tips on how to report bugs, and the official release schedule, please refer to the release notes:
There are many ways to contribute beyond bug reporting. You can help translate software and content, test and give feedback on software updates, write and edit documentation, help with all sorts of promotional activities, and package free software for use by millions of Fedora users worldwide. To get started, visit [9] today!"
Toshio Kuratomi [1] on Fri Apr 20 00:04:15 UTC 2012 announced[2],
"Voting for the Fedora 18 release names has begun. You can find the potential names in the voting application: [3]
If you are a Fedora contributor (defined as having signed the FPCA and being in one other Fedora group in the account system) then you are eligilbe to vote.
This cycle, the Board is also asking contributors to let us know if we should continue to have release names for future Fedora releases. Even though the interface is the same, this portion is intended to be a poll rather than a straight up vote. The Fedora Board will look at the answers to determine if enough contributors value continuing to create release names to make it worthwhile in the future. If it does seem desirable, the Board will likely look into forming a working group to come up with a new method for creating release names for future releases.
The poll for keeping release names is also found in the voting application: [4]
Eligibility to answer the poll is the same as for being able to vote on the names themselves (having signed the FPCA and being in one other group)."
The Development Announcement[1] list is intended to be a LOW TRAFFIC announce-only list for Fedora development.
Acceptable Types of Announcements
Unacceptable Types of Announcements
David Aquilina[1] on Tue Apr 10 19:51:42 UTC 2012 announced[2],
"Time flies like the wind...
As it's already time again for another Fedora release on Power, this time for Fedora 17 Alpha.
We've hit a couple of bumps along the road to the Alpha, but at long last we're finally at a state where we're ready to release it to the public.
Due to lack of developer time and hardware, Apple hardware support is at this point completely untested. Especially with the switch to grub2 we rely on community feedback and participation to make this work for this release. So if you have the hardware and want it to work, patches welcome! :)
The bits are available from your closest mirror:
More details about this Alpha release can be found here:
One of our focuses in the lead up to the beta of Fedora 17 for Power will be addressing architecture-specific packaging issues in as many packages as possible. If you own a package in Fedora which has ExclusiveArch or ExcludeArch set, please take a moment to verify that the architectures you've excluded or are exclusive to are still correct and sane.
I want to thank everyone involved in making this happen once more. Many Fedora packagers and contributors have again stepped up and helped fix issues that only appeared on Power hardware. Moreover the whole Fedora Secondary Arch team has been doing a fantastic job to get us to where we are now, especially considering that we had a complete switch of builders and hub hardware, mass rebuild and a hub failure along the way!
As usual, you can reach the whole team on the #fedora-ppc IRC channel on FreeNode and via our email list:
And we have our Secondary Arch wiki with (decently) updated information:
For Phil, Karsten, and the entire Fedora for Power team, Thanks & regards, David"
Fedora New Project Leader, Robyn Bergeron[1] on Wed Apr 11 03:23:31 UTC 2012 announced[2],
"Please join us on irc.freenode.net in #fedora-meeting-1 for this important meeting. This will be Round 3 of this meeting for the Beta release of F17.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012 @21:00 UTC (17:00 EDT/14:00 PDT)
"Before each public release Development, QA and Release Engineering meet to determine if the release criteria are met for a particular release. This meeting is called the Go/No-Go Meeting."
"Verifying that the Release criteria are met is the responsibility of the QA Team."
For more details about this meeting see: [3]
In the meantime, keep an eye on the Fedora 17 Beta Blocker list: [4]
Ongoing Beta RC test results can be seen here: [5]
See you there, Wednesday, in #fedora-meeting-1.
-Robyn, fingers and toes crossed thoroughly"
Robyn Bergeron - Fedora Project Leader[1] on Thu Apr 12 05:11:27 UTC 2012 announced[2],
"At today's F17 Beta Go/No-Go meeting, the Fedora 17 Beta release was declared gold. F17 Beta will be released Tuesday, April 17, 2012.
Thanks to everyone involved for pulling this one together and participating in the meetings, things came together well this week. :)
For those interested in the details:
Full minutes follow below.
Meeting started by rbergeron at 21:00:32 UTC. The full logs are available at [5]"
The purpose of event is to build a global Fedora events calendar, and to identify responsible Ambassadors for each event. The event page is laid out by quarter and by region. Please maintain the layout, as it is crucial for budget planning. Events can be added to this page whether or not they have an Ambassador owner. Events without an owner are not eligible for funding, but being listed allows any Ambassador to take ownership of the event and make it eligible for funding. In plain words, Fedora events are the exclusive and source of marketing, learning and meeting all the fellow community people around you. So, please mark your agenda with the following events to consider attending or volunteering near you!
Archive of Past Fedora Events[1]
In this section, we cover news from the trade press and elsewhere that is re-posted to the Fedora Marketing list[1].
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing
Contributing Writer: Jason Brooks
Karin Bakis posted[1] a batch of stories covering the Fedora 17 beta release:
"The Fedora Project has announced the release of the first and only beta version of Fedora 17, the final version of which is due for publication on 22 May. The beta implements all major changes in full, including the 'UsrMove' modification to filesystem structure, which will result in all applications and libraries being stored in subdirectories of /usr/." (The H)
The coverage includes articles from The H[2], Linux Today[3], PC World[4], Internet News[5]and DistroWatch[6].
Additional Fedora 17 beta release coverage in German, posted[7] by Henrik Heigl, includes stories from Golem[8], Heise[9], Linux Magazin[10] and Pressebox[11].
Jason Brooks posted[1]:
"While Fedora 17 is certainly beefy, what's been delivered with this first and only beta is not particularly miraculous.
"Among the more noticeable changes is GNOME 3.4, the latest version of the GNOME 3 desktop. While the Fedora DVD still ships with a variety of desktops, the live CD defaults to GNOME and for some time now Fedora has served as a showcase for the development of GNOME 3."
The full review is available [2].
Jason Brooks posted[1] a lengthy (2,800 word) take on Fedora and its history from The H:
"To the right kind of user, with imagination and adventure to spare, Fedora is a thing of wonder. And for other users there are Fedora spins which give a different set of perspectives for those with specialised tastes and preferences. The value of Fedora to ordinary users is that it doesn't stand still, and each new release brings new possibilities."
The full article is available[2].
In this section, we cover Security Advisories from fedora-package-announce for the period April 1, 2012 - April 11, 2012.
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce
Contributing Writer: User:Astiando