Status of the Alpha
by Jesse Keating
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
14 years, 4 months
Reminder: Do not use trademarks in Summary or Description
by Tom Callaway
Please, if you're a packager, take a moment and go read this:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Guidelines#Trademarks_in_Summary...
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
14 years, 4 months
2009-01-29 - Fedora Test Day - Text-mode install removal
by James Laska
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
14 years, 4 months
Fedora 11 Alpha Status
by Jesse Keating
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
14 years, 4 months
[LONG] The fonts SIG irregular status report
by Nicolas Mailhot
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/msg000...
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
14 years, 4 months
[Guidelines Change] Changes to the Packaging Guidelines
by Tom Callaway
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_...
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_f...
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_implementa...
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_lib...
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
14 years, 4 months
Fedora 11 Feature Update Request
by John Poelstra
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
14 years, 4 months
Fedora 11 Alpha Freeze one week away
by Jesse Keating
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
14 years, 4 months
Fedora 11 release name
by Paul W. Frields
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
14 years, 4 months
