Fedora Atomic Initiative (rpm-ostree 2014.5)

[Colin Walters]

Hi,

I'm happy to announce a new version of rpm-ostree - v2014.5:
https://github.com/cgwalters/rpm-ostree/commit/848fdcb350877ab509c2fef3e482d8da8c97c717

With this new release, there is now a new overarching name/brand for 
the project formerly known as "rpm-ostree":

Fedora Atomic Initiative
------------------------

The new website replaces the old one:

http://rpm-ostree.cloud.fedoraproject.org/

The website is hopefully more informative now. rpm-ostree was 
previously mentioned here:

https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2014-January/194156.html

Which got some LWN coverage here:

http://lwn.net/Articles/581811

I also gave a talk at Devconf.cz, which is recorded (albeit truncated) 
here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy0ZEHPXJ9Q

Changes
-------

Since the last release, SELinux now works in fully enforcing mode. This 
is built on top of new SELinux support in the new core OSTree v2014.2 
release:
https://mail.gnome.org/archives/ostree-list/2014-March/msg00000.html

The rpm-ostree-autobuilder component now generates data sufficient to 
present a UI of the generated trees, with *automatically* generated 
screenshots:
http://rpm-ostree.cloud.fedoraproject.org/#/build-status

(Yes, it's a "build" system that takes screenshots, because it's also a 
*testing* system - I believe the two should come tightly coupled).

There is now the concept of a "treefile", which is kind of like a 
kickstart, except without the partition provisioning and ability to 
execute arbitrary code:
https://github.com/cgwalters/rpm-ostree/blob/master/doc/demo-treefile.json


What's next
-----------

The rationale behind the broader branding of the Fedora Atomic 
Initiative is that rpm-ostree is not an island - the long term vision 
has a potentially deep impact on the Fedora project technology, 
structure, and culture. You can see some of the requisite technological 
changes here:

https://github.com/cgwalters/fedora-atomic/blob/master/TODO.md

An example of a potential cultural shift is:
http://fedorapeople.org/~walters/devconf-2014-rpm-ostree/#13

In general, I hope for more people in the project to *additionally* see 
software as trees, not just packages.

Imagine for example of applying the "branch+merge" concept to entire 
collections of packages. Say for example that we were doing another 
technology change on the magnitude of systemd. I'd like to make it easy 
to create a fork of the OS, with patches to *multiple* packages, test 
those changes as a unit, and merge them as a unit back into the 
mainline.

In the short term though, the goals are:

1) Test rawhide (the RPMs)
2) Improve the rpm-ostree/OSTree code

For 1), I think I can demonstrate some powerful value as far as testing 
goes. Enough that I believe it will offset the costs of having Anaconda 
support, for example.

To recap again, the TODO list is:
https://github.com/cgwalters/fedora-atomic/blob/master/TODO.md

Some of those, such as the /var have active ongoing discussion. Others 
like /usr/lib/passwd don't - and I would very much like to have 
/usr/lib/passwd just be the Fedora default. So for that, I'll post a 
new thread at some point soon.

That's all - there's no separate mailing list for this initiative yet - 
so please just reuse this fedora-devel-list!


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