devel June 2023

devel@lists.fedoraproject.org

202 participants
217 discussions

Packaging Guidelines for Applications using Git Submodules
by Gerald B. Cox 06 Aug '25

06 Aug '25

I'm trying to figure out the best way to handle the situation where a project decides to use submodules in Git. The archive generated doesn't incorporate the submodule files. I've done some searching on this, and haven't really come up with much. I've reviewed: Packaging:Github <https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:SourceURL?rd=Packaging/SourceURL#G…> ; but that really doesn't address the submodule issue. I looked through some packages that are currently in the Fedora repository and found where a few folks have rebuilt the tarball and referenced that version as the Source in the spec file; then they put in a comment stating: The source of this package was pulled from upstreams' vcs. Use the following commands to generate the tarball: ... - git clone ... - git submodule init - git submodule update ... This approach is the best that I've found. Any other suggestions? Thanks much!

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Intel's Clear Linux optimizations
by František Zatloukal 06 Aug '25

06 Aug '25

Hi, Phoronix recently release article[1] about Intel's Clear Linux with some cool graphs showing nice performance gain compared to Xubuntu. I didn't have time to dig in and look how it's performing against Fedora, but I'd assume Fedora can be compared to Xubuntu in terms of compiler settings. I think i'll be interesting to look into it and find out if Fedora can't tweak compiler settings (eg use LTO for critical things like Mesa, Kernel, ...). I think it could be interesting fo Fedora users to have this enabled if there are not any disadvantages other than compile time, compile memory usage and so on. What do you think? [1] http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel-clr-opengl&num=1 -- Best regards / S pozdravem, František Zatloukal Project Coordinator Red Hat

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%patchN deprecated?
by Michael J Gruber 12 Jul '25

12 Jul '25

Has `%patchN` been deprecated in favour of `%patch N`? I got a push by a proven packager to one of the packages which I maintain, commit subject and changelog entry "Fix deprecated patch rpm macro". It contains no explanation and no reference whatsoever. I didn't find any heads up notice, nor info in the packaging guidelines, but I didn't try too hard - because it's not my job. I mean: One person is doing that push. Is it too much to ask to get at least the slightest bit of reference or communication before or into a push which probably affects hundreds of people? If not out of courtesy then out of mere common sense of efficiency? On the technical side, I'd be interested why this is better (fewer macros?) and which releases can take it, and what are the recommendations for `PatchN:`-lines (with or without N), and why (or whether) the recommendation isn't to go for `%autosetup` or `%autopatch` - maybe all answered in the missing reference. P.S.: There is nothing to "fix" here either, only to "adapt" to the deprecation notice, but I'll take that one easy between non-native speakers, presumably.

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dnf "no match for group package" on upgrade...
by Matthew Miller 02 Jun '25

02 Jun '25

I'm seeing a number of people confused by this message, usually followed by some actual transaction error. I _think_ this is happening because these packages are in comps but do not exist in the distro. Is this correct? I tried to search for it, but the error message is _very_ common in ... well, people who are asking about it because of what I said. (For example: https://unix.stackexchange.com/q/542877/2511) I found https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1538346 but not much of a general resolution. It does note that one issue is arch-specific packages (which maybe just need "arch=..." in comps?). I think we should: 1. Have a schedule standarded task to remove any packages listed but non-existent after branch from rawhide. (I assume a Rel-Eng task?) 2. Have DNF make this message less scary. Maybe even move down to a debug message and not show it by default — I am not seeing a situation where they're useful to _most_ end-users. Anything I'm missing? -- Matthew Miller <mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org> Fedora Project Leader

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Orphaned magic-wormhole + its python deps
by Fabio Valentini 21 Jan '25

21 Jan '25

Hi everyone, I have just orphaned magic-wormhole (the original one written in Python) and its dependencies. I no longer use it, I have no time to fix the packages for new Python versions, and upstream is pretty much dead since they started porting the project to Rust. - python-magic-wormhole - python-magic-wormhole-mailbox-server - python-magic-wormhole-transit-relay - python-txtorcon - python-spake2 - python-hkdf There is an alternative Go implementation of the "Wormhole Protocol" (wormhole-william), for which eclipseo already submitted a review request. It seems to be better maintained than the Python original, if we want to have a Wormhole client in Fedora: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1922806 The official port of magic-wormhole to Rust also seems to be progressing, we might want to package that one instead once it's released: https://github.com/magic-wormhole/magic-wormhole.rs Fabio

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Applications with AppData and not visible in the software center
by Richard Hughes 14 Oct '24

14 Oct '24

We've been looking at the AppStream extractor issues in Fedora, and we've come across a few broken applications. Broken apps are not visible in the application installer. The apps include: * albumart * apitrace-gui * appstream * asylum * audience * bomber * bovo * calligra-braindump * cervisia * choqok * classified-ads * crrcsim * cube * curblaster * dsi * escape * ettercap * font-manager * freedink-engine * gap-core * gnofract4d * gvrng * hgview * hyperrogue * kaddressbook * key-mon * kgraphviewer * knotes * konqueror * LabPlot * nextcloud-client (maybe fixed in distgit) * openms * openvibe * owncloud-client * pingus * pioneer * portecle * qdigidoc * qjackctl * qsynth * qtikz * recoll * renku * rodent * screengrab * screenruler * simple-ccsm * slashem * spectacle * speed-dreams * tennix * tilp2 * tortoisehg * trophy * tzclock * uzbl-defaults * vdrift * vegastrike * wireshark-gtk * xfce4-power-manager * xfpanel-switch * xskat * yakuake * zanshin * zathura The full list, along with what failed is available here: https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/screenshots/f26/failed.html If you want any suggestions or advice, I'm happy to help. Most of the failures are pretty self explanatory, e.g. "No <summary> in AppData" or "icon was too small 24x24" -- our guidelines are here: https://github.com/hughsie/appstream-glib/blob/master/README.md#guidelines-… As a reminder, you can validate AppData files using: appstream-util validate-relax file.appdata.xml Thanks, and comments welcome. I can set up a script that sends email to the package maintainer if this would be helpful, but I thought we might be able to get the majority of these sorted with this email. Richard.

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Porting Fedora for the LoongArch architecture.
by 孙海勇 17 Aug '24

17 Aug '24

Hi everyone, I am Sun Haiyong, from China. I want to port Fedora for the LoongArch architecture. LoongArch is a RISC ISA released by Loongson Technology Corporation Limited, and has supported a series of (Binutils, GCC, Linux, Glibc, LLVM, QEMU, etc.) core open source projects. Currently, there are many linux distributions that can run on LoongArch machines, they are OpenEuler, OpenAnolis, UOS, Kylin. I am good at cross-compiling operating systems and often build Linux systems using something like LFS or CLFS. I have built Linux distributions using rpm package management from scratch several times since 2015 (some systems are not publicly available): 1 Fedora 21, 28, 32 based on MIPS64EL architecture; 2 CentOS 7 based on MIPS64EL architecture; 3 CentOS 7 based on Power8 architecture; 4 CentOS 8.3 based on LoongArch architecture; 5 OpenEuler 2109 based on LoongArch architecture. And I have published a book on porting Fedora systems to new architectures. I want to add LoongArch to the official Fedora support architecture, and I've been doing so for some time, here's some of what I've done so far： To verify the feasibility of building a LoongArch architecture branch for Fedora, I have used the software version from the rawhide git repository, and have now compiled a large number of base packages and built a temporary repository that can be accessed at https://mirrors.wsyu.edu.cn/fedora/ I have compiled and generated more than 45,000 installable rpm files (of course there are a lot of perl, Python, rust and texlive files), and the number is still expanding, the scope of the package is enough to build a LiveCD system, for which I have built LXDE, MATE, WorkStation ( Gnome3) of the LiveCD and the installation of the ISO, you can get in the following address: https://github.com/fedora-remix-loongarch/releases-info Of course, there are still a lot of problems with LoongArch's Fedora system, for example, some software is not yet fully supported by the upstream community, but I believe the power of the community can gradually improve them, so I am sending out an email here to get more people to support this new LoongArch architecture. I have recruited some developers who are interested in this and they are： Wu Xiaotian Chen Huacai Shi Pujin Si Yanteng Chen Feiyang Of course, there are many other users who are interested in Fedora systems. I'm currently a newbie in the Fedora community, so I need help from community developers, and would like someone to guide me on what to do next, such as what would be a better time to submit necessary patches to packages in the Fedora repository, how to develop in a collaborative manner, what other systems to be used for management, etc. In short, any information would be useful. Could I get help here? :) Again, thanks for reading this email. Best Regards Sun Haiyong

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sysusers scriptlets: what to do if upstream includes the config files?
by Adam Williamson 26 Jul '24

26 Jul '24

The guidelines for sysusers packaging: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/packaging-guidelines/UsersAndGroups/#_… say: "Create a <package-name>.sysusers file with the user definition and add it to the specfile as a source...use the %sysusers_create_compat macro to consume it in the %pre section: %pre %sysusers_create_compat %{SOURCE3} " but...what are you supposed to do if *upstream* ships the config files? openQA recently added these to its upstream distribution, so it seems wrong to replace the config files upstream ships with ones separately packaged downstream. But if I don't package them as source files, how can I set up the %pre macro? I tried this: %pre %sysusers_create_compat usr/lib/sysusers.d/geekotest.conf where usr/lib/sysusers.d/geekotest.conf is the path to one of the sysusers config file within the upstream source, but it doesn't seem to work. The built package has no %pre script. However, that does work if I eval it locally from an openQA source tree: [adamw@xps13k openQA (master %)]$ rpm --eval "%sysusers_create_compat usr/lib/sysusers.d/geekotest.conf" # generated from geekotest.conf getent group 'geekotest' >/dev/null || groupadd -r 'geekotest' ...etc... so...help? Is there any way to make this work right? Thanks! -- Adam Williamson Fedora QA IRC: adamw | Twitter: adamw_ha https://www.happyassassin.net

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F35 Change: Debuginfod By Default (Self-Contained Change proposal)
by Ben Cotton 05 Jun '24

05 Jun '24

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/DebuginfodByDefault == Summary == Fedora users / developers who need to debug/trace distro binaries can make use of the recently activated elfutils-debuginfod servers to automatically fetch debugging data and source code, instead of having to use `# sudo dnf` commands. == Owner == * Name: [[User:fche| Frank Ch. Eigler]] * Email: fche(a)redhat.com == Detailed Description == Numerous fedora debugging-type tools have built-in capabilities to use the [https://sourceware.org/elfutils/Debuginfod.html debuginfod] protocol to fetch debuginfo/source code automatically. We would like to activate a setting so that Fedora's debuginfod servers are automatically used, rather than requiring hand-editing individual users' dot files. == Feedback == There has existed [https://www.spinics.net/lists/fedora-devel/msg279002.html broad interest] in a Fedora debuginfod server since the project was proposed / announced in 2020, and several distros already operate public servers of this nature. Some of the distros configure their installations by default to talk to those servers, some do not. Turning on this by default has some limited privacy implications. Some Debian users have [https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2021/02/msg00262.html expressed concerns] that this facility "calls home" during debugging, so it may expose a limited amount of information about what a user is debugging. The information is limited to the build-id and source code file names of programs being debugged, and is only sent to the servers if their machine lacks locally installed debuginfo. Whether this should be opt-in or opt-out and how has been resolved there via an install-time query to the sysadmin. In contrast, on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, it is [https://build.opensuse.org/request/show/879926 simply defaulted-on], and we have heard of no controversy. We anticipate discussing this topic on the mailing list, and noting it in the release notes either way. == Benefit to Fedora == This will improve developers' experience. It may reduce download server burden, as only individual ELF/DWARF/source files are downloaded rather than entire `-debuginfo` and `-debugsource` RPMs. It would help Fedora catch up to other distros who put up `debuginfod` servers already. :-) == Scope == * Proposal owners: The work could consist one extra parameter in the `elfutils.spec` `%configure`. Its effect is to arrange for the `elfutils-debuginfod-client` RPM to install an `/etc/profile.d` file that sets the `DEBUGINFOD_URLS` environment variable automatically to `https://debuginfod.fedoraproject.org/`. (At the time of this writing, the _staging_ server is getting ready for testing: `https://debuginfod.stg.fedoraproject.org/`.) * Other developers: None - relevant code has been previously upstreamed! * Release engineering: None - our team is operating the `debuginfod[.stg].fedoraproject.org` VMs. * Policies and guidelines: N/A (not needed for this Change) * Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change) * Alignment with Objectives: N/A == Upgrade/compatibility impact == None. Note that these servers index all active Fedora releases (32-), all architectures, so users of those versions can already set `DEBUGINFOD_URLS` manually to take advantage. == How To Test == * Install `elfutils-debuginfod-client` * Open arbitrary fedora binary via gdb. ** Admire the immediate downloading of debuginfo and source code. * Run `eu-stack -v -p $pid` for an arbitrary process. ** Admire the immediate downloading of debuginfo to give precise file:line data. == User Experience == Primarily: users running debuggers, profilers, tracing tools on internet-capable machines can work immediately, without switching to privileged users and fragile manual `dnf` commands to install this data. == Dependencies == The `debuginfod` servers at `fedora-infra` need to be up. == Contingency Plan == * Contingency mechanism: change the elfutils-debuginfod-client subrpm to not set the default `DEBUGINFOD_URLS` environment variable for all users. In the case of a server outage, the debugger tools revert to debuginfo-less operation, prior to this feature. * Contingency deadline: shortly before freeze * Blocks release? No == Documentation == There is upstream documentation in the debugging tools as well as associated with the client code / cli tooling. What our Release Notes would focus on however is the _automatic activation_ of this facility via the environment variable. == Release Notes == TBD. -- Ben Cotton He / Him / His Senior Program Manager, Fedora & CentOS Stream Red Hat TZ=America/Indiana/Indianapolis

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future of dual booting Windows and Fedora, redux
by Chris Murphy 29 May '24

29 May '24

Summary: Windows 10/11 increasingly enables Bitlocker (full disk encryption) out of the box with the encryption key sealed in the TPM. Two different issues result: 1. Fedora's installer, Anaconda, can't resize Bitlocker volumes. We could use better documentation to help the user perform the volume resize in Windows, before proceeding to booting our installation media. The documentation probably should be explicitly referenced by the Windows version of Fedora Media Writer. 2. The Bitlocker encryption key is unsealed only if the boot chain measurement by the TPM matches the expected values in a TPM PCR. When shim+GRUB are in the boot chain, as is the case in our default dual boot installation, the measurements are wrong, and this means the GRUB menu entry to boot Windows won't work. The user is dropped to a Windows Bitlocker recovery page. If they have their backup encryption key handy, it will work but to say the least this condition is unexpected and not user friendly - not least of which is many users won't have this backup key handy since they didn't take the action to enable Bitlocker in the first place. The bug report for this is https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2049849 It was a Fedora 36 final release blocking bug, but considered a "difficult to fix" exceptional case, moving it to Fedora 37 final. Some of the options for consideration: a. Fix GRUB by giving it the ability to modify UEFI NRAM "bootnext" value, so that instead of chainloading the Windows bootloader from GRUB, GRUB will modify the system NVRAM such that the next boot (only) will directly boot the Windows bootloader. Thus far there's no interest by GRUB upstream. Whereas systemd-boot has implemented it. b. Add a user space utility modifies system NVRAM such that the next boot (only) will directly boot the Windows bootloader. And also remove the Windows boot entry in GRUB, on UEFI systems. (It would be retained on BIOS systems.) c. Change the release criterion. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_36_Final_Release_Criteria#Windows_dua… Current: The installer must be able to install into free space alongside an existing clean Windows installation and install a bootloader which can boot into both Windows and Fedora. Replacement: The installer must be able to install into free space alongside an existing clean Windows installation, install and configure a bootloader that will boot Fedora. d. Consider the problem sufficiently difficult to fix that we need an extension to the exceptional case allowance, and wave the bug for another release. Thoughts? -- Chris Murphy

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devel June 2023