I need content for your spin's webpage- by Fri Oct 16

[Máirín Duffy]

Hi folks,

It looks like the following spins will be available [1] in Fedora 12:

- AOS Spin (David Huff)
- BrOffice.org Spin (Igor Pires Soares)
- Education Spin (Sebastian Dziallas)
- Electronic Lab Spin (Chitlesh Goorah)
- Games Spin (Bruno Wolff III)
- LXDE Spin (Christoph Wickert)
- XFCE Spin (Kevin Fenzi & Adam Miller)

As you likely well know, we've come up with a new 
spins.fedoraproject.org design. The initial design includes individual 
spin details pages. These designs can evolve and be modified however you 
folks would like - our main goal for the F12 timeframe is to have a nice 
spins site that looks professional and is easy-to-use rather than what 
we have today which is basically a flat dump of torrent files [2] and 
scattered spins details pages and wiki pages.

So the general idea is we'll have a main directory of spins:

https://fedoraproject.org/w/uploads/1/11/Spins-directory-popularity_1.png

And each spin will have its own multiple-tabbed page to offer up 
downloads and other other details you'd like to make available. Here's 
an example one I mocked up for the KDE spin:

https://fedoraproject.org/w/uploads/3/31/Spin-details-home.png

You see the tabs for the spin - I think that depending on your spins' 
needs, these can be flexible, but at a minimum we need a 'home' tab to 
give a basic description of what the spin is, and a 'download' tab to 
provide the downloads.

I hope you're all cool with this. :) I've been trying to blog this on 
Planet Fedora and it's been discussed on the logistics-list and fab list 
as well for the past couple months or so, but it was totally my 
oversight to not include this list in the process. I'm hoping moving 
forward we can take the design I came up with as a kind of potential 
vision, and adapt the design to meet your needs over time.

If we're all good there, what I would like to get from you all by next 
Friday if possible:

- A slogan for your spin to serve as the heading for the home page. The 
sample one I came up for KDE is: "It's your desktop. Be free." If you 
need helping coming up with one I'm happy to help.

- At least a paragraph describing what your spin is used for, who your 
spin is for, what unique features it has - that kind of information. 
This will also go on the home tab.

- A representative screenshot for your spin.

- For the downloads tab, if you'd like custom text to describe the spin 
download, let me know. Otherwise I'll use the defaults in this mockup: 
https://fedoraproject.org/w/uploads/c/ce/Spin-details-download.png

- For the support tab, I'd like to know what IRC channels or other live 
support options users have for your spin (if any), what mailing lists / 
forums / non-live support options users have for your spin (if any), and 
what documentation would you like to highlight to new users. An example 
is shown here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/File:Spin-details-support.png

- Finally, I'd like to create some custom branding for each spin, so the 
different spins pages are distinguishable from one another. You can see 
in this KDE spin mockup, I did a bar above the tabs that has the KDE 
logo. Let me know what kind of graphic you'd like for your spin ASAP and 
I can come up with mockups: 
https://fedoraproject.org/w/uploads/3/31/Spin-details-home.png

I know this is a lot to ask, but can you give it a shot and let me know 
if this is not do-able or if you have any concerns? I'm usually on 
freenode as 'mizmo' or you can shoot me an email or we can discuss 
on-list here as well.

Thanks,
~m

p.s. the full spins.fpo site redesign is available here: 
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Website_redesign_2009/Mockups/Spins.fpo

[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:Spins_Fedora_12
[2] http://spins.fedoraproject.org/

[Chitlesh GOORAH]

Hello there,

I have completed contents of FEL's website up to 90% with respect to
the current fedora websites git repo. But we still have to agree on
the choice of colours for header only. You'll find some screenshots
and sources below.


2009/10/8 Máirín Duffy <>:
>  These designs can evolve and be modified however you
>  folks would like - our main goal for the F12 timeframe is to have a nice
>  spins site that looks professional and is easy-to-use rather than what
>  we have today which is basically a flat dump of torrent files [2] and
>  scattered spins details pages and wiki pages. 
I think it's worth mentioning that FEL on the other hand has its
website since F-8.
http://chitlesh.fedorapeople.org/FEL/

I'm hoping with this new website other FEL contributors can edit the
future FEL website that it is till now.

>  And each spin will have its own multiple-tabbed page to offer up
>  downloads and other other details you'd like to make available. Here's
>  an example one I mocked up for the KDE spin: 
Before I comment about FEL, I want to stress the fact I disagree on
the choice of gradient and colours for FEL spin. Mairin agreed to
propose a new mockup based on my requirements. So I'll just point
those items I agree on so that others can comment on.

>  https://fedoraproject.org/w/uploads/3/31/Spin-details-home.png
>  
Considering the numberings on
http://chitlesh.fedorapeople.org/website/615px-Spin-details-generic.png

1) I would like it removed entirely as any background colour limits
the colour tones of our pictures/screenshots to be added on the page.
In other words, it makes it hard to ensure harmony between
pictures(contents) and the layout. Mo agreed to propose another mockup
with a different colour tone soon.

2) The gradient on the spin specific banner (in this case) does not
seem to give enough engineering value to the amount of effort put
behind the spin. It takes too much space. I would propose remove the
gradient completely and reduce the height of the spin specific banner
as the complete header takes nearly 40% of the 1074x786screen.

3) Mo and I agree that this "uplevel" spin SIG specific should stay.

>  You see the tabs for the spin - I think that depending on your
> spins'
>  needs, these can be flexible, but at a minimum we need a 'home' tab to
>  give a basic description of what the spin is, and a 'download' tab to
>  provide the downloads. 
The problem with horizontal tabs is that there is an eventual
limitation on the number of tabs until it becomes a two-line tabs. I
encountered this problem as the actual FEL website more tabs and can't
all be added to this new layout.

>  If we're all good there, what I would like to get from you all by
> next
>  Friday if possible: 
Small notice about my fedora vacation: After this sunday, I will be
completely offline till the release of F-12.

>  - A slogan for your spin to serve as the heading for the home page.
> The
>  sample one I came up for KDE is: "It's your desktop. Be free." If you
>  need helping coming up with one I'm happy to help. 
(FEL)
Design, Simulate and Program electronics.
(Author: Mo)

>  - At least a paragraph describing what your spin is used for, who
> your
>  spin is for, what unique features it has - that kind of information.
>  This will also go on the home tab. 
Fedora's Electronic Laboratory empowers you with an advanced
opensource electronic design and simulation platform for micro-nano
electronics engineering. FEL is dedicated to support the innovation
and development brought by opensource Electronic Design Automation
(EDA) community.

>  - A representative screenshot for your spin.
http://chitlesh.fedorapeople.org/website/FEL-frontpage-Screenshot.jpeg

>  - For the downloads tab, if you'd like custom text to describe
> the spin
>  download, let me know. Otherwise I'll use the defaults in this mockup:
>  https://fedoraproject.org/w/uploads/c/ce/Spin-details-download.png 
Please add the following on top of your default mockup:
------------------------------------------------------------
Fedora Electronic Lab is free. No licenses required. No kernel patches
are required, making it easy to deploy and use in production
environment.
Fedora Electronic Lab can be deployed with these simple mechanisms, via either

    * yum,
    * a Fedora Electronic Lab LiveDVD.

Yum install
As from Fedora-11 Leonidas,Fedora users can groupinstall all FEL EDA
software at once with:

# yum groupinstall 'Electronic Lab'
---------------------------------------------------------

>  - For the support tab, I'd like to know what IRC channels or
> other live
>  support options users have for your spin (if any), what mailing lists /
>  forums / non-live support options users have for your spin (if any), and
>  what documentation would you like to highlight to new users. An example
>  is shown here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/File:Spin-details-support.png 
Please take the download.html file from
http://chitlesh.fedorapeople.org/website/content.tar.bz2



Now, let me show you some screenshots of FEL's website.
* Home tab http://chitlesh.fedorapeople.org/website/websiteHome.png
* About tab http://chitlesh.fedorapeople.org/website/websiteabout.png
* Portfolio tab http://chitlesh.fedorapeople.org/website/websitePortfolio.png
* Publications tab
http://chitlesh.fedorapeople.org/website/websitepublications.png

You will notice the sidebar has FEL specific information. I would
appreciate if you could leave it as it is.

All text on these screenshots have been jotted down into html files
for todays' fedora website spin.fedoraproject.org.git.
http://chitlesh.fedorapeople.org/website/content.tar.bz2
They should be in the "data" directory

Images http://chitlesh.fedorapeople.org/website/FEL.tar.bz2. Images
should be placed on static/images/FEL.

I would appreciate if you update the fedora websites git at soonest so
that before my holiday, I can still comment on it :)

Cheers,
Chitlesh

[Máirín Duffy]

On 10/08/2009 04:57 PM, Chitlesh GOORAH wrote:
>  I have completed contents of FEL's website up to 90% with respect
> to
>  the current fedora websites git repo. But we still have to agree on
>  the choice of colours for header only. You'll find some screenshots
>  and sources below. 
Based on our discussion earlier today, here's a set of mockups to show 
what I was envisioning for the FEL spins.fpo profile. What do you think?

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Website_redesign_2009/Mockups/Spins.fpo#Fe...

~m

[Chitlesh GOORAH]

2009/10/9 Máirín Duffy :
>  Based on our discussion earlier today, here's a set of mockups to
> show
>  what I was envisioning for the FEL spins.fpo profile. What do you think?
>
>
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Website_redesign_2009/Mockups/Spins.fpo#Fe...
These are great. Nothing to comment on. Thanks for the great work Mo.

Cheers,
Chitlesh

[Paul W. Frields]

On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 10:53 PM, Chitlesh GOORAH
<chitlesh.goorah(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  2009/10/9 Máirín Duffy :
> > Based on our discussion earlier today, here's a set of mockups to show
> > what I was envisioning for the FEL spins.fpo profile. What do you think?
> >
> >
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Website_redesign_2009/Mockups/Spins.fpo#Fe...
>
>  These are great. Nothing to comment on. Thanks for the great work Mo. 
Beautiful collaboration guys!

Paul

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Thu, Oct 08, 2009 at 14:47:04 -0400,
  Máirín Duffy <duffy(a)fedoraproject.org&gt; wrote:

I am the current games spin maintainer.

>  - A slogan for your spin to serve as the heading for the home page.
> The 
>  sample one I came up for KDE is: "It's your desktop. Be free." If you 
>  need helping coming up with one I'm happy to help. 
I don't think I am a good slogan person. The goal of the spin is to be
a showcase for Fedora using games.

>  - At least a paragraph describing what your spin is used for, who
> your 
>  spin is for, what unique features it has - that kind of information. 
>  This will also go on the home tab. 
My vision of the games spin is that is a way to demo / showcase Fedora.
People can try it out and if they like some of the games they can install
Fedora and install even more games.

There isn't room for all of the games in Fedora to fit on a DVD. And because
it is a showcase, I wanted to not include any old game. I wanted to pick
the best representatives from various genres so that people are more likely
to find one they want. Once they have Fedora installed they can install all
of the games and go looking for more games. The spin is also based off the
desktop spin with wine excluded. (There isn't much point to wine on the
games spin, and it causes problems with bloat for the x86_64 version of
the spin if it is included.)

Playing off a DVD is too slow (to get started, once inside most games, play
is OK) to use on a regular basis. Saving games is also problematic. So I
don't envision people using the DVD for other than demoing and testing that
they can use 3D graphics on a system. Eventually it may make sense to have
some info on how to create a games spin on a USB drive with a way to save
games and to have a complete selection of games.

Some games in Fedora need third party data because the data is not free
(typically it's noncommercial use only). I have avoided putting these on
the spin, since having to download a hundred megabytes of data to play
a game isn't going to be a very positive experience for a demo.

3D games on the spin are also problematic. For F11 they probably didn't work
on any machines. For F12 they may work on machines with Intel and/or ATI cards.
(Very recently I have been able to run 3d games on ATI cards with some
crashes.) They are not going to work on machines with nvidia cards. There are
third party drivers (available from rpmfusion) that will allow these games
to work on more systems, but they can't be included in the spin. (I tried
including them in a custom spin and found that because of the way these
packages work, you can't usefully include them on the spin. About the best
you can do is set up the rpmfusion repositories so that installing them
later is easier.) Never the less I have included some 3D games on the games
spin, because they are popular. (And because they were on the spin before
I took over. The previous maintainer had a different vision for the spin
and it made more sense to include games that wouldn't run off the DVD, but
would once you had installed from it and had gotten 3rd party drivers
installed.)

In the future I am hoping to include more games (if lmza + squashfs combined
gets into the kernel allowing for better compression). I also want to do
a more detailed review of games (especially since 3D seems to be working
natively) to see if I want to want some big games or include additional
small ones. I also want to write up some QA test cases for the included games
while I am trying the games out.

The first paragraph is probably close to what you want, but for completeness
I wanted to provide more background about the spin. Since if you understand
it better, you might be able to better tweak the information provided to
new users.
 
>  - A representative screenshot for your spin. 
I think you could pick an interesting screen shot from any game in the
spin here. There are lots of possibilities and without some idea of
what kind of screen shot you want it's hard to suggest one.

>  - For the downloads tab, if you'd like custom text to describe
> the spin 
>  download, let me know. Otherwise I'll use the defaults in this mockup: 
>  https://fedoraproject.org/w/uploads/c/ce/Spin-details-download.png 
I don't have any special requirements here.

>  - For the support tab, I'd like to know what IRC channels or
> other live 
>  support options users have for your spin (if any), what mailing lists / 
>  forums / non-live support options users have for your spin (if any), and 
>  what documentation would you like to highlight to new users. An example 
>  is shown here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/File:Spin-details-support.png 
For the games spin, fedora-games-list(a)redhat.com,
fedora-spins(a)lists.fedoraproject.org and fedora-list(a)redhat.com are all
reasonable places to ask about aspects of the games spin. The games list
would probably be the best place to discuss what games should or should
not be on the games spin. The spins list would be for discussing generic
things about the spin that might apply to other spins. For general help
fedora-list is probably the best forum.

I don't generally hang out in IRC so the general places people might get
help with Fedora would be applicable.

>  - Finally, I'd like to create some custom branding for each spin,
> so the 
>  different spins pages are distinguishable from one another. You can see 
>  in this KDE spin mockup, I did a bar above the tabs that has the KDE 
>  logo. Let me know what kind of graphic you'd like for your spin ASAP and 
>  I can come up with mockups: 
>  https://fedoraproject.org/w/uploads/3/31/Spin-details-home.png 
This isn't my area of expertise. I think whatever you pick is going to be
better than what I would come up with.

[Bruno Wolff III]

I'll at least have some default suggestions in by the deadline, but feel
free to make your own suggestions for me to use.

[Bruno Wolff III]

On a related note we were discussing how this modified the spins process
and we realized we will need to notify you team when things change (new spins,
dropped spins, recurring spins that want new slogans and the like) and we
want to know what is the preferred way to get this information to the
right team. (So we can document the the process.) Thanks.

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 07:57:08 -0500,
  Bruno Wolff III <bruno(a)wolff.to&gt; wrote:
>  On Thu, Oct 08, 2009 at 14:47:04 -0400,
>    Máirín Duffy <duffy(a)fedoraproject.org&gt; wrote:
>  
>  I am the current games spin maintainer.
>  
>  > - A slogan for your spin to serve as the heading for the home page. The 
>  > sample one I came up for KDE is: "It's your desktop. Be free." If you
>
>  > need helping coming up with one I'm happy to help. 
I came up with a possible slogan that is an excellent fit with my vision
for the Games Spin, but may or may not be a great slogan.

"Play with Fedora today!"

This has a double meaning of "Try out Fedora today!" and "Play games using
Fedora today!" which pretty much captures the vision I have for the spin.

[Igor Pires Soares]

Em Qui, 2009-10-08 às 14:47 -0400, Máirín Duffy escreveu:
>  Hi folks,
>  
>  It looks like the following spins will be available [1] in Fedora 12:
>  
>  - AOS Spin (David Huff)
>  - BrOffice.org Spin (Igor Pires Soares)
>  - Education Spin (Sebastian Dziallas)
>  - Electronic Lab Spin (Chitlesh Goorah)
>  - Games Spin (Bruno Wolff III)
>  - LXDE Spin (Christoph Wickert)
>  - XFCE Spin (Kevin Fenzi & Adam Miller)
>  
>  As you likely well know, we've come up with a new 
>  spins.fedoraproject.org design. The initial design includes individual 
>  spin details pages. These designs can evolve and be modified however you 
>  folks would like - our main goal for the F12 timeframe is to have a nice 
>  spins site that looks professional and is easy-to-use rather than what 
>  we have today which is basically a flat dump of torrent files [2] and 
>  scattered spins details pages and wiki pages. 
The BrOffice.org Spin content is ready to go. I would like someone to
proofread it since English is not my main language, if possible. I would
really appreciate it.

Feel free to contact me if you need some more content. The mockups look
awesome!

Regards,
Igor Pires Soares

[Jesse Keating]

On Thu, 2009-10-08 at 14:47 -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote:
>  - AOS Spin (David Huff) 
We haven't done AOS for any of the milestones for F12, and I haven't
seen any chatter or comment from David in a while.  Are we still doing
this spin?

-- 
Jesse Keating
Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature!
identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating

[David Huff]

On 10/16/2009 12:30 AM, Jesse Keating wrote:
>  On Thu, 2009-10-08 at 14:47 -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote:
> > - AOS Spin (David Huff)
>  
>  We haven't done AOS for any of the milestones for F12, and I haven't
>  seen any chatter or comment from David in a while.  Are we still doing
>  this spin? 
As far as I knew we were still doing this spin.  Has anything changed?

-D

[Máirín Duffy]

Hi Bruno!

On 10/12/2009 09:14 PM, Bruno Wolff III wrote:
>  I came up with a possible slogan that is an excellent fit with my
> vision
>  for the Games Spin, but may or may not be a great slogan.
>
>  "Play with Fedora today!" 
Here's my work-in-progress so far for the front page of the Games Spin. 
What do you think?

https://fedoraproject.org/w/uploads/4/4d/Spin-details-games-home.png

~m

[Jesse Keating]

On Fri, 2009-10-16 at 11:30 -0400, David Huff wrote:
>  As far as I knew we were still doing this spin.  Has anything
> changed? 
It wasn't there for Alpha, nor any of the snapshots, and won't likely be
there for Beta, and nobody noticed.  Does this spin actually have any
users?

-- 
Jesse Keating
Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature!
identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating

[Sebastian Dziallas]

Hi Mo,

I've put all this stuff on the wiki page...

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Education_Spin#Spins_Page

Hope it actually works! On the custom branding, I'm not sure what would 
work best. From the logos here (https://fedorahosted.org/education/) I 
guess neither would fit there really good... :/

Let me know if there's anything I can help with!

--Sebastian

[Paul W. Frields]

On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 02:38:24PM -0700, Jesse Keating wrote:
>  On Fri, 2009-10-16 at 11:30 -0400, David Huff wrote:
>  > As far as I knew we were still doing this spin.  Has anything changed?
>  
>  It wasn't there for Alpha, nor any of the snapshots, and won't likely be
>  there for Beta, and nobody noticed.  Does this spin actually have any
>  users? 
Per the torrent server it received almost 1,000 downloads for F11.

More to the point, what is required for the spin to be there, that
isn't/wasn't being done along the way?  Do the AOS spin maintainers
understand that requirement properly?

-- 
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

[Jesse Keating]

On Mon, 2009-10-19 at 10:47 -0400, Paul W. Frields wrote:
>  Per the torrent server it received almost 1,000 downloads for F11.
But we don't know how many of those were just "download everything and
seed" people.

>  
>  More to the point, what is required for the spin to be there, that
>  isn't/wasn't being done along the way?  Do the AOS spin maintainers
>  understand that requirement properly?  
I think all the required stuff was there for it to be there, but since
it uses a different compose tool it didn't get done in my compose
script, and I noticed too late for Alpha.  I then waited for anybody to
notice that it wasn't there any more, which nobody did, and decided to
play the same game for Beta.  Making spins is not a trivial task, nor is
hosting them.  If we aren't driving anybody to the spin or if the
absence of the spin goes unnoticed, one has to wonder if the time and
effort is worth it.

-- 
Jesse Keating
Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature!
identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating

[David Huff]

On 10/19/2009 05:33 PM, Jesse Keating wrote:
>  On Mon, 2009-10-19 at 10:47 -0400, Paul W. Frields wrote:
> > Per the torrent server it received almost 1,000 downloads for F11.
>  
>  But we don't know how many of those were just "download everything and
>  seed" people.
>  
> >
> > More to the point, what is required for the spin to be there, that
> > isn't/wasn't being done along the way?  Do the AOS spin maintainers
> > understand that requirement properly? 
>  
>  I think all the required stuff was there for it to be there, but since
>  it uses a different compose tool it didn't get done in my compose
>  script, and I noticed too late for Alpha.  I then waited for anybody to
>  notice that it wasn't there any more, which nobody did, and decided to
>  play the same game for Beta.  Making spins is not a trivial task, nor is
>  hosting them.  If we aren't driving anybody to the spin or if the
>  absence of the spin goes unnoticed, one has to wonder if the time and
>  effort is worth it. 

I admit that the AOS is not currently top priority of my day Job, which
is why I did not notice it was missing in Alpha, however my
understanding is that everything was in place, and was on schedule to
ship with F12.

I also understand that there is still demand for a small version of
Fedora, form ISV's and others who want to add there own apps on a
small-footprint spin.

If the AOS is going to miss F12, which is not optimal, I think there are
a couple issue that need to be addressed.  First I think I need to
better understand the compose process of a spin and maybe we should
rethink the distribution method of the AOS, tarball vs iso image.

So two questions:
- Will the AOS make F12?
- What needs to change to make rel-eng life easier so this does not
happen again?


-D

[Jesse Keating]

On Tue, 2009-10-20 at 10:54 -0400, David Huff wrote:
>  So two questions:
>  - Will the AOS make F12? 
I'm willing to ship it as part of F12, but given the lack of notice that
it was missing I'd really re-think it as an "official spin" for F13.

>  - What needs to change to make rel-eng life easier so this does not
>  happen again?  
It would be nice if it used the same compose tool and configuration file
setup that the rest of the spins use, so that it can fall into the
script that composes everything else.  I understand if that's not
possible, it just makes my life harder then.

-- 
Jesse Keating
Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature!
identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating

[David Huff]

On 10/20/2009 01:25 PM, Jesse Keating wrote:
>  On Tue, 2009-10-20 at 10:54 -0400, David Huff wrote:
> > So two questions:
> > - Will the AOS make F12?
>  
>  I'm willing to ship it as part of F12, but given the lack of notice that
>  it was missing I'd really re-think it as an "official spin" for F13.
I agree, I would really like to try and get something solid for F13.  I
think this will help increase the numbers of users per your original
argument.

> > - What needs to change to make rel-eng life easier so this does
> not
> > happen again? 
>  
>  It would be nice if it used the same compose tool and configuration file
>  setup that the rest of the spins use, so that it can fall into the
>  script that composes everything else.  I understand if that's not
>  possible, it just makes my life harder then. 
Can you provide me with more information on how this compose tool works.
 I would like to better understand the process in order to determine how
we can make this easier.

-D

[Jesse Keating]

On Thu, 2009-10-22 at 10:04 -0400, David Huff wrote:
>  Can you provide me with more information on how this compose tool
> works.
>   I would like to better understand the process in order to determine how
>  we can make this easier.  
All the other spins use livecd-creator, the same arguments, and all
build on the fedora-live-base.ks file.  AOS uses appliance-creator, has
different arguments, and uses a different base ks file.  That's what
makes it harder to produce.

-- 
Jesse Keating
Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature!
identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating

[Jeroen van Meeuwen]

On 10/22/2009 07:36 PM, Jesse Keating wrote:
>  On Thu, 2009-10-22 at 10:04 -0400, David Huff wrote:
> > Can you provide me with more information on how this compose tool works.
> >   I would like to better understand the process in order to determine how
> > we can make this easier.
>
>  All the other spins use livecd-creator, the same arguments, and all
>  build on the fedora-live-base.ks file.  AOS uses appliance-creator, has
>  different arguments, and uses a different base ks file.  That's what
>  makes it harder to produce.
>  
It doesn't necessarily use a different tool though; the AOS kickstart 
works with just livecd-tools; it's just that they want a partioned 
disk.img in a .tar.gz that makes it need a different util.

Whether it does or does not use fedora-live-base.ks shouldn't be a problem.

-- Jeroen

[David Huff]

On 10/22/2009 01:41 PM, Jeroen van Meeuwen wrote:
>  On 10/22/2009 07:36 PM, Jesse Keating wrote:
> > On Thu, 2009-10-22 at 10:04 -0400, David Huff wrote:
> >> Can you provide me with more information on how this compose tool works.
> >>   I would like to better understand the process in order to determine how
> >> we can make this easier.
> >
> > All the other spins use livecd-creator, the same arguments, and all
> > build on the fedora-live-base.ks file.  AOS uses appliance-creator, has
> > different arguments, and uses a different base ks file.  That's what
> > makes it harder to produce.
> >
>  
>  It doesn't necessarily use a different tool though; the AOS kickstart 
>  works with just livecd-tools; it's just that they want a partioned 
>  disk.img in a .tar.gz that makes it need a different util.
>  
>  Whether it does or does not use fedora-live-base.ks shouldn't be a problem. 
Well the initial goal was to develop a base appliance "image," which
would specify a minimal package set that could be expanded upon.

We went the spin route b/c it seemed like the right way/place to address
building Fedora based "images" and get some community involvement.  The
problem we are hitting is that an "Image" is not the same as a spin,
currently a spin is nothing but a livecd iso image.

Idealy a spin could be something other that just a livecd iso, and the
current livecd's (spins) would all be based off the minimal package set
and include additional packages and post scripts to make the "Image" a
bootable livecd.

I don't think the tooling is a real issue, rather the "compose" step,
which AIUI is a manual process that involves rel-eng, is this correct?

-D

[Jesse Keating]

On Thu, 2009-10-22 at 14:05 -0400, David Huff wrote:
>  
>  I don't think the tooling is a real issue, rather the "compose" step,
>  which AIUI is a manual process that involves rel-eng, is this
>  correct?  
Right.

To answer Jeroen's question, because it doesn't use fedora-live-base, if
I have to hack up a local repo to pull in last minute changes, or
re-direct the repo to previous day's rawhide, that's one more config
file I have to edit and duplicate changes into.  It just makes it
different from the rest and more likely to be either forgotten, or put
off until later.

-- 
Jesse Keating
Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature!
identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating

[Jeroen van Meeuwen]

On 10/22/2009 08:10 PM, Jesse Keating wrote:
>  On Thu, 2009-10-22 at 14:05 -0400, David Huff wrote:
> >
> > I don't think the tooling is a real issue, rather the "compose" step,
> > which AIUI is a manual process that involves rel-eng, is this
> > correct?
>
>  Right.
>
>  To answer Jeroen's question, because it doesn't use fedora-live-base, if
>  I have to hack up a local repo to pull in last minute changes, or
>  re-direct the repo to previous day's rawhide, that's one more config
>  file I have to edit and duplicate changes into.  It just makes it
>  different from the rest and more likely to be either forgotten, or put
>  off until later.
>  
Would some kind of "make" magic help with that maybe?

-- Jeroen

[David Huff]

On 10/22/2009 02:10 PM, Jesse Keating wrote:
>  On Thu, 2009-10-22 at 14:05 -0400, David Huff wrote:
> >
> > I don't think the tooling is a real issue, rather the "compose" step,
> > which AIUI is a manual process that involves rel-eng, is this
> > correct? 
>  
>  Right.
>  
>  To answer Jeroen's question, because it doesn't use fedora-live-base, if
>  I have to hack up a local repo to pull in last minute changes, or
>  re-direct the repo to previous day's rawhide, that's one more config
>  file I have to edit and duplicate changes into.  It just makes it
>  different from the rest and more likely to be either forgotten, or put
>  off until later. 
This is what I am interested in.  Can you provide the steps that are
required to build a livecd, ie create/hack repos? run livecd-creator?
verify images? etc...

Also what is the environment that you use to build these images?

-D

[Jesse Keating]

On Thu, 2009-10-22 at 14:31 -0400, David Huff wrote:
>  This is what I am interested in.  Can you provide the steps that are
>  required to build a livecd, ie create/hack repos? run livecd-creator?
>  verify images? etc... 
To build  LiveCD you need a kickstart file that optionally includes a
base kickstart file, define package repositories to use, defines the
packages to be installed, and defines the post script modifications to
be done.  Then livecd-creator is called, referencing the kickstart file,
with a few more options to define what the iso is labeled, etc..

I think verification is built into the Live booter, but I haven't
checked in a while.

>  
>  Also what is the environment that you use to build these images?  
Rawhide, an x86_64 host (use setarch i686 to produce the i686 images).

-- 
Jesse Keating
Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature!
identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating

[Jesse Keating]

On Thu, 2009-10-22 at 20:28 +0200, Jeroen van Meeuwen wrote:
>  Would some kind of "make" magic help with that maybe?
Probably not.  Its really not the end of the world that there are 2
files, it just makes me a tad grumpy when I have to fiddle with them,
for a spin that doesn't seem to get a lot of action.

-- 
Jesse Keating
Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature!
identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating

[Jesse Keating]

On Tue, 2009-10-20 at 10:54 -0400, David Huff wrote:
>  On 10/19/2009 05:33 PM, Jesse Keating wrote:
>  > On Mon, 2009-10-19 at 10:47 -0400, Paul W. Frields wrote:
>  >> Per the torrent server it received almost 1,000 downloads for F11.
>  > 
>  > But we don't know how many of those were just "download everything and
>  > seed" people.
>  > 
>  >>
>  >> More to the point, what is required for the spin to be there, that
>  >> isn't/wasn't being done along the way?  Do the AOS spin maintainers
>  >> understand that requirement properly? 
>  > 
>  > I think all the required stuff was there for it to be there, but since
>  > it uses a different compose tool it didn't get done in my compose
>  > script, and I noticed too late for Alpha.  I then waited for anybody to
>  > notice that it wasn't there any more, which nobody did, and decided to
>  > play the same game for Beta.  Making spins is not a trivial task, nor is
>  > hosting them.  If we aren't driving anybody to the spin or if the
>  > absence of the spin goes unnoticed, one has to wonder if the time and
>  > effort is worth it.
>  
>  
>  I admit that the AOS is not currently top priority of my day Job, which
>  is why I did not notice it was missing in Alpha, however my
>  understanding is that everything was in place, and was on schedule to
>  ship with F12.
>  
>  I also understand that there is still demand for a small version of
>  Fedora, form ISV's and others who want to add there own apps on a
>  small-footprint spin.
>  
>  If the AOS is going to miss F12, which is not optimal, I think there are
>  a couple issue that need to be addressed.  First I think I need to
>  better understand the compose process of a spin and maybe we should
>  rethink the distribution method of the AOS, tarball vs iso image.
>  
>  So two questions:
>  - Will the AOS make F12?
>  - What needs to change to make rel-eng life easier so this does not
>  happen again?
>  
>   
I knew this was going to bite me.  I just tried to make the AOS images
for F12, and appliance-creator threw tracebacks at me.  Have you tried
making an image at all during the F12 cycle?

-- 
Jesse Keating
Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature!
identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating