devel-announce March 2009

devel-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org

12 participants
21 discussions

Announcing Fedora 11 Beta
by Jesse Keating 31 Mar '09

31 Mar '09

This is the part where I usually come up with something clever to say before the useful information regarding a development release. I had something great, I really did. In fact I had the most clever statement in the world. Only you see, my cat jumped on my keyboard, right when I was testing emacs (I don't even use emacs!) and the darn X session just got zapped! All my cleverness gone, and this, well this is just a tribute. When Fedora 10 was released, users and press alike gushed: "Slick and stable... has a rock solid feel." "Fast and easy." "A great release." What's next for the free operating system that shows off the best new technology of tomorrow? You can find out at: http://fedoraproject.org/get-prerelease We also hope to repeat the crazy success of Fedora 10's Beta contest! Test five things in the Beta that are important to you as a user. If you find a bug *and* report it, you get the free attention of a package maintainer on a problem personally important to you! Do your part to make Fedora 11 that much better. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/ Among the top features of this ground-breaking release: * Automatic Fonts & Mime Installer - Allows programs on the desktop to automatically install applications, fonts, multimedia capabilities, and clipart. * Fingerprint Readers - Better experience for systems with fingerprint readers, including support through the graphical Authentication Configuration tool and gnome-about-me. * Intel, ATI, and Nvidia kernel modesetting - Fedora 10 provided the first steps by a major distribution in using the kernel modesetting (KMS) feature to speed up graphical boot. Fedora 11 has increased the video card coverage of the KMS feature, with more to come. * Virt Console - Fedora 11 provides more accurate mouse pointer positioning and higher screen resolutions for virtual machine consoles, along with other improvements such as simpler use of USB devices. * MinGW Cross-compiler - Build and test full-featured Microsoft Windows programs, from the comfort of a Fedora system, without needing to use that "other OS." * Volume Control - The multimedia experience of Fedora users is improved by an easily understandable and much more flexible volume control. But wait, there's more! For developers there are all sorts of goodies: * Python 2.6 - This new version in Fedora is a precursor to Python 3000 (3.0), including many compatibility measures to help developers get their code prepared for the next generation of Python. * NetBeans 6.5 - NetBeans IDE 6.5 is a significant update of NetBeans IDE 6.1 that includes improved JavaScript, AJAX, Ruby, and database support. * gcc 4.4 - The gcc compiler suite has been updated to the latest version, featuring better error detection for the latest in safety and execution. * Eclipse profiling tools - Add the power of various native profiling tools into the Eclipse IDE and integrate with the rest of the development environment. Peek under the hood and there is still more: * Desktop Environments - Updates to Gnome 2.26 and KDE 4.2.1 bring the latest innovations and functionality to desktop users. Xfce and Sugar have also been updated. * Anaconda Storage - New storage code for the Anaconda installer improves the ability to handle new types of storage. The rewrite does not change the user interface. * Minimal Platform - New installer features make it much easier to create very small installations for embedded applications, such as for a server or desktop appliance. * Control groups - Allows system administrator to partition the system resources into different sub groups, and dedicate these sub groups resources to different applications' need. * DeviceKit - A simple, modular system service to manage devices and designed to partially replace HAL. Users gain a graphical disk management application that integrates nicely into the desktop. * DNS Security - DNSSEC (DNS SECurity) is a mechanism that can prove integrity and authenticity of DNS data. * ext4 filesystem - ext4 is the new default file system for Fedora 11 (replacing ext3) allowing for larger file system support and better performance by providing real-time fragmentation prevention and smarter data allocations. * sVirt MAC - sVirt integrates SELinux with the Fedora virtualization stack to allow Mandatory Access Control (MAC) security be applied to guest virtual machines * Power Management - Fedora 11 includes new power monitoring utilities and a new system daemon that automatically adjusts power settings to reflect the current system use. There is also a facility to review the system and make suggestions on improving power consumption. * IBus input method - Ibus has been rewritten in C, and provides a simple, clean default system for changing the way international users input information into a Fedora system. And that is only the beginning. A more complete list and details of each new cited feature is available: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/11/FeatureList For release information, including common and known bugs, please refer to the release notes: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_11_Beta_release_notes Since this is a Beta release, there may still be some rough spots still in the polishing phase. Some of them are already known and in the process of fixing. If you find a problem, please check the list of known issues and then file a bug: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_11_Beta_release_notes#Known_Issues https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla -- Jesse Keating Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature! identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating

1 0

Fedora 11 early branch now available.
by Jesse Keating 31 Mar '09

31 Mar '09

For those of you that wish to separate Fedora 11 stabalization work from future development, we are now ready to process branch requests for F-11. If you branch your package early, builds from your new F-11 branch will continue to go to the Fedora 11 targets. dist-f11 for now, and eventually dist-f11-updates-candidate. Builds from devel/ will be sent to dist-f12 and will be held for the Fedora 12 rawhide once we get Fedora 11 out the door. To request a branch, please continue to use the cvsadmin request method: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers/CVSAdminProcedure -- Jesse Keating Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature! identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating

1 0

Qt 4.5 coming to Fedora 9 and 10, license changing to LGPL
by Kevin Kofler 28 Mar '09

28 Mar '09

Hi, We are working on providing Qt 4.5.0 as updates for Fedora 9 and 10. The updates have already been built. They will be tagged into the buildroots for Fedora 9 and 10 shortly after this announcement is sent, in order for KDE 4 packages to get rebuilt against it, as some KDE modules are highly dependent on the Qt version used to build them and check the Qt version at build time. (Therefore, we timed the Qt upgrade to coincide with the KDE 4.2.2 update, which we will be packaging during the next few days.) From there, the Qt 4.5.0 updates will be pushed to updates-testing and eventually the stable updates together with KDE 4.2.2. If you maintain any Qt-4-based package, please: * check if your package needs patching or rebuilding to fully work with Qt 4.5. The update is normally backwards-compatible, so almost all packages are expected to work with no changes. However, due to bugs in some applications and bugs in Qt 4.4 which were being worked around, there are some rare cases where patches are needed. If you are aware of any such patches, please apply them to Rawhide immediately if not already done, then to Fedora 9 and 10 as soon as Qt 4.5 is in the buildroots. Once you have the patched or rebuilt version built, please talk to us on #fedora-kde or the fedora-kde mailing list to have your package included into the Qt 4.5 update group. * check if your package can benefit from getting rebuilt against Qt 4.5 for some other reason, e.g. new features which require Qt 4.5 at build time, or a new upstream version requiring Qt 4.5 to build. If so, please proceed as above. * make sure you DO NOT push out an update which was built against Qt 4.5 before Qt 4.5 itself (as the compatibility is only unidirectional, i.e. packages built against Qt 4.5 will most likely NOT work with Qt 4.4). If you need to build and push an urgent update to a Qt-4-using package (e.g. a security update), please talk to Rex Dieter (via e-mail or IRC) to get Qt 4.5 temporarily untagged from the buildroot so you can build it against Qt 4.4. We are pushing this update to the stable releases of Fedora for 4 reasons: * some packages benefit vastly from the improvements in Qt 4.5, in particular Arora hugely benefits from the major improvements in QtWebKit, * it fixes several bugs in the Qt 4.4 series, * it will be required for KDE 4.3 (and some other software) and * at least one package in a third-party repository is waiting for the license change (see below) for license compatibility reasons. As it is a backwards-compatible update, we do not expect major disruption. Compatibility issues with Qt 4.5 have already been identified and fixed during the weeks Qt 4.5 has been in Rawhide, so they should all be resolved by now. Please also note that, as already announced when the new version hit Rawhide, the license has changed from: GPLv2 with exceptions or GPLv3 with exceptions to: LGPLv2 with exceptions or GPLv3 with exceptions which is more permissive. For the Fedora KDE SIG, Kevin Kofler

1 0

Fedora 11 Beta Freeze lifted
by Jesse Keating 28 Mar '09

28 Mar '09

We have composed our Beta images, and thus I'm lifting the beta freeze. Tomorrow's rawhide will have all the pent up changes. March on toward final! -- Jesse Keating Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature! identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating

1 0

opensync downgrade to 0.22
by Andreas Bierfert 25 Mar '09

25 Mar '09

During the next hours opensync will be downgraded to version 0.22 in rawhide as has been discussed on the devel list recently and been prepared for a while by Adam Williamson and me. Test packages can be found here [1] a bug for the downgrade has been opened here [2]. This downgrade will mean for all packages which depend on opensync in some way to be rebuild. If there are questions let me and Adam know. Best Regards, Andreas [1] - http://fedora.lowlatency.de/opensync-synce/ [2] - https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=492013 -- Andreas Bierfert, M.Sc. | http://awbsworld.de | GPG: C58CF1CB andreas.bierfert(a)lowlatency.de | http://lowlatency.de | signed/encrypted phone: +49 2402 102373 | cell: +49 173 5803043 | mail preferred

1 0

2009-03-26 - Fedora Test Day - Nouveau graphics driver
by James Laska 25 Mar '09

25 Mar '09

Greetings testers, Adam Williamson and Ben Skeggs have lined up an exciting Fedora Test Day topic. This Thursday, March 26 will focus on testing the new nouveau graphics driver. If the Intel graphics test day [1] was any indication, this will be a busy event. As outlined in the NouveauAsDefault feature page [2], the nouveau driver will be replacing the previous 'nv' driver for nVidia chipsets. There are several notable improvements including RANDR 1.2 support and accelerated XRENDER support. To determine if you have the required hardware, run the following command: # /sbin/lspci -d 10de: | grep -iq VGA && echo "Join Nouveau Fedora Test Day" So come join #fedora-qa this Thursday, March 26, 2009 to share your Nouveau graphics test results. A Fedora live image will be available to aid testing. Stay tuned for more details are available at https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Test_Days/2009-03-24. Thanks, James [1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Test_Days/2009-03-12 [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/NouveauAsDefault

1 0

Announcing Transifex 0.5
by Dimitris Glezos 20 Mar '09

20 Mar '09

Indifex and the Transifex Community are proud to announce the newest version of their flagship translation platform, Transifex 0.5. Transifex is a web application written in Python using the Django web framework that gives translators a web interface to various version control systems. Files to be translated can be downloaded, translated files can be uploaded directly to the source repository, and various translation statistics can be read at a glance. Transifex is already in use by the Fedora Project to translate its interfaces to an audience of more than 5 million users. What does it offer? =================== Transifex currently supports the following Version control systems: - Concurrent Version System - Subversion - Bazaar - Mercurial - Git For statistics generation, Transifex supports static gettext message catalogs and intltool-based ones, used by the vast majority of open source software projects. What's new in 0.5? ================== A full list of the features offered in this release can be found in the release notes: http://docs.transifex.org/releases/0.5.html This release represents a significant advance in Transifex development since the Transifex 0.3 release in November 2008. Here’s a 40K-foot view of the release in numbers and most important feature categories. 243 files changed, 14027 insertions(+), 319 deletions(-) - Complete re-write of the source code on top of the Django Web framework - New data model supporting multiple repositories per project (eg. branches or domains of files), and project collections (eg. Fedora, GNOME, etc.) - Calculation of a project’s translation coverage (statistics) - Submission support of files to a variety of version control systems - Support for serving translation files to users for easy access to them - User registrations and authentication (including OpenID) - Simple workflow support What does it look like? ======================= The Fedora Project is currently running an instance of Transifex at: https://translate.fedoraproject.org/tx/ For some eye candy, check out the screenshots on our site, at: http://transifex.org/screenshots How can I get it? ================= Project and community managers who want to deploy Transifex for their own community can get Transifex in a variety of ways. A tarball of Transifex 0.5 is available at: http://transifex.org/files/ For full installation instructions, refer to the documentation section: http://docs.transifex.org/intro/install.html RPM packages for Fedora 9, Fedora 10, and Fedora Rawhide are or will soon be available via yum: yum install transifex transifex-extras RPM packages for RHEL 5, CentOS 5, and Scientific Linux 5 will be available in Fedora EPEL: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL Regards, The staff of Indifex and the Transifex Community http://transifex.org/ http://www.indifex.com/

1 0

Fedora 11 Beta slip
by Jesse Keating 20 Mar '09

20 Mar '09

Today we have decided to slip the Beta release by 7 days. There are a number of reasons, https://bugzilla.redhat.com/showdependencytree.cgi?id=476774&hide_resolved=1 has gory details, but essentially: * Late discovered PPC breakage * LiveCD installation fallout due to anaconda storage rewrite * More time for anaconda storage rewrite to settle This is in no means a pointing of fingers, many factors led to the current state we're in now. Our task now is to determine the best way to get a valuable Beta release out to our users with as little effect to the final release schedule. As such, Release Engineering in coordination with QA and maintainers who are working on the above issue have agreed to enact a 7 day slip. The final release date will not change, we will absorb the lost week into the time between beta and final freeze. Rawhide freeze will remain in effect. Only critical changes will be tagged for the Beta, in order to maximize our changes at fixing the current issues without introducing new ones. -- Jesse Keating Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature! identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating

1 0

Outage Notification - 2009-03-19 04:00 UTC
by Mike McGrath 18 Mar '09

18 Mar '09

There will be an outage starting at 2009-03-19 04:00 UTC, which will last approximately 30 minutes. To convert UTC to your local time, take a look at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure/UTCHowto or run: date -d '2009-03-19 04:00 UTC' Affected Services: Buildsystem (EPEL/Plague only) Fedora Talk Gobby lists.fedoraproject.org DNS (ns1 only) Unaffected Services: CVS / Source Control Database Fedora Hosted Fedora People Mail Mirror System Torrent Translation Services Websites Ticket Link: https://fedorahosted.org/fedora-infrastructure/ticket/1271 Reason for Outage: One of our sponsors, ServerBeach (http://serverbeach.com) provides hosting for the above affected services and has scheduled an outage to conduct network maintenance on the switch our servers are on. This will cause them to be unavailable for a period of time. Contact Information: Please join #fedora-admin in irc.freenode.net or respond to this email to track the status of this outage.

1 0

Upcoming Fedora Test Days ... DeviceKit and XFCE
by James Laska 14 Mar '09

14 Mar '09

Greetings, With Fedora 11 Beta looming [1], I'd like to invite folks to help test several upcoming release Features. * DeviceKit [2] - Tuesday, March 17, 2009 * XFCE-4.6 [3] - Thursday, March 19, 2009 = DeviceKit = Ever notice how the graphical disk management functionality present during a Fedora installation is not available after you've installed your system? <Enter DeviceKit on stage left> DeviceKit adds a graphical disk management utility (provided by gnome-disk-utility) and provides the backend for gnome-power-manager. If you have some time to spare, and removable media or USB/fireware attached storage ... I invite you to join #fedora-qa this Tuesday, March 17, 2009 to help make sure your unique hardware works when Fedora 11 is released. Developers Tomas Bzatek and Matthias Clasen, along with testers Radek Biba and Ondrej Hudlicky, will help guide test efforts and analyze failures. Additional information and test cases are landing in https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Test_Days/2009-03-17. = XFCE-4.6 = Already a seasoned XFCE user? Or, tired of the same old desktop and looking for something different? Fedora 11 will feature XFCE-4.6 which adds a number of improvements [4] including a redesigned configuration manager and power management integration. XFCE maintainer Kevin Fenzi and our very own Adam Williamson are looking for your input to help craft test cases [5] and ensure a smooth transition to the latest upstream release. Come share your findings this Thursday, March 19 in #fedora-qa. Stay tuned to https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Test_Days/2009-03-19 for more information. Thanks, James [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/11/Schedule [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/DeviceKit [3] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Xfce46 [4] http://wiki.xfce.org/releng/4.6/general-info [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-February/msg00555.html

1 0

2026

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

devel-announce March 2009