=== Fedora Weekly News Issue 136
Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 136 for the week ending July 26, 2008.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue136
Fedora Weekly News keep you updated with the latest issues, events and
activities in the fedora community.
If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see
our 'join' page. Being a Fedora Weekly News beat writer gives you a
chance to work on one of our community's most important sources of news,
and can be done in only about 1 hour per week of your time.
We are still looking for a beat writer to summarize the Fedora Events
and Meetings that happened during each week.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join
* 1 Fedora Weekly News Issue 136
o 1.1 Announcements
+ 1.1.1 FESCo Election Results
+ 1.1.2 Cast your vote for the Fedora 10 Codename!
+ 1.1.3 Fedora 10 Alpha Freeze
+ 1.1.4 Announcing the Fedora OLPC Special Interest Group
+ 1.1.5 Fedora Unity releases updated Fedora 9 Re-Spin
+ 1.1.6 Feature Process Improvements
+ 1.1.7 FUEL opens up collaborative standardization of localization terms
o 1.2 Planet Fedora
+ 1.2.1 Shameless Recruiting Pitch
+ 1.2.2 Intel's Moblin moves to Fedora
+ 1.2.3 Events
+ 1.2.4 Tech Tidbits
+ 1.2.5 Other Interesting Posts
o 1.3 Marketing
+ 1.3.1 Linus Torvalds' personal Linux distro? Fedora 9, of course
+ 1.3.2 Asus Eee PC Fedora Respin
+ 1.3.3 Zimbra changes license to address Fedora concerns
+ 1.3.4 Seneca College teams with FOSS projects for hands-on learning
+ 1.3.5 Intel's Moblin switches from Ubuntu in favor of Fedora
+ 1.3.6 Fedora launches OLPC group
+ 1.3.7 Ring. Ring. It's Fedora calling
+ 1.3.8 Linux Symposium Proceedings Available
+ 1.3.9 Video: Fedora Live
o 1.4 Ambassadors
+ 1.4.1 FAD EMEA 2008 - Date & Location Determined
+ 1.4.2 Planning for Fedora 10 Release Parties
+ 1.4.3 Event Reports Reminder
o 1.5 Developments
+ 1.5.1 Erratum: FWN#133 "Shark" is a JIT not a VM
+ 1.5.3 XULRunner Security Update Breakage Stimulates Bodhi Discussion
+ 1.5.4 Broken Upgrade Paths Due to NEVR
+ 1.5.5 Application Installer "Amber" Provides Browser Interface to Packages
+ 1.5.6 RPM Inspires Intel Moblin2 Shift From Ubuntu
o 1.6 Artwork
+ 1.6.1 Nodoka development
+ 1.6.2 Gathering feed-back about Fedora 10 theme proposals
+ 1.6.3 A possible Bluecurve revival
o 1.7 Security Advisories
+ 1.7.1 Fedora 9 Security Advisories
+ 1.7.2 Fedora 8 Security Advisories
=== Announcements
In this section, we cover announcements from the Fedora Project.
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-announce-list
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-announce
Contributing Writer: Max Spevack
=== FESCo Election Results
Brian Pepple announced the results of the Fedora Engineering Steering
Committee election[1]:
"The results of the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo)
election are in: Bill Nottingham, Kevin Fenzi, Dennis Gilmore, Brian
Pepple, and David Woodhouse have been elected to full two-release terms,
and Jarod Wilson, Josh Boyer, Jon Stanley and Karsten Hopp have been
elected to a one-release term."
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-July/msg00010.html
=== Cast your vote for the Fedora 10 Codename!
Josh Boyer reminded folks to vote[1]:
"As long as you have signed the CLA and belong to one additional group
in the Fedora Account System, you can cast your vote.
Voting will end and be tallied at 23:59:59 28 July 2008 UTC."
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-July/msg00011.html
=== Fedora 10 Alpha Freeze
Jesse Keating announced[1]:
"We have our first development freeze of the Fedora 10 cycle tomorrow.
This is the alpha freeze, which is non-blocking. Release Engineering
will be making a freeze inside the buildsystem of tomorrow's rawhide
content. This will be the basis of the Fedora 10 Alpha release."
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-July/msg00008.html
=== Announcing the Fedora OLPC Special Interest Group
Greg DeKoenigsberg announced[1]:
"Thus, I am proud to announce the formation of the Fedora OLPC Special
Interest Group. Our mission: to provide the OLPC project with a strong,
sustainable, scalable, community-driven base platform for innovation.
Immediate Goals:
1. To identify and take responsible ownership of as many OLPC base
packages as possible.
2. To maintain an excellent Sugar environment for Fedora, including a
dedicated Sugar spin.
3. To identify useful opportunities for collaboration (infrastructure,
localization, etc.)"
[1]
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-July/msg00009.html
=== Fedora Unity releases updated Fedora 9 Re-Spin
Jeroen van Meeuwen informed us[1]:
"The Fedora Unity Project is proud to announce the release of new ISO
Re-Spins (DVD) of Fedora 9.
These Re-Spin ISOs are based on the officially released Fedora 9
installation media and include all updates released as of July 18th,
2008. The ISO images are available for i386 and x86_64 architectures via
Jigdo starting Sunday, July 20th, 2008."
[1]
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-July/msg00007.html
=== Feature Process Improvements
John Poelstra had some excellent news on the feature front[1]:
"I was recently talking with Paul Frields about how to make the feature
process more accessible... this combined with feedback in the rpm thread
have led to a (hopefully) clearer presentation of how the feature
process works."
[1]
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-July/msg00009.html
=== FUEL opens up collaborative standardization of localization terms
FUEL (Frequently Used Entries for Localization) aims at solving the
problem of inconsistency and lack of standardization in computer
software translation across the platform for all Languages. It will try
to provide a standardized and consistent look of computer for a language
computer users.
https://fedorahosted.org/fuel
=== Planet Fedora
In this section, we cover the highlights of Planet Fedora - an
aggregation of blogs from Fedora contributors worldwide.
http://planet.fedoraproject.org
Contributing Writer: Max Spevack
=== Shameless Recruiting Pitch
We begin this week's summary of Planet Fedora with a recruitment pitch
for Fedora Weekly News beat writers, scribed by Karsten Wade.
=== Intel's Moblin moves to Fedora
The topic that took Planet Fedora by storm on Friday and Saturday was
the announcement of Intel's Moblin moving from Ubuntu to Fedora as its
base OS. Yaakov Nemoy, John Palmieri, Seth Vidal, and Karsten Wade all
weighed in with their thoughts.
=== Events
A number of event reports were posted on Planet Fedora this week.
* LUG Radio Live UK, attended by Max Spevack.
* Ottawa Linux Symposium (day 1), as reported by Dennis Gilmore.
* LTSP Hackfest (day 1), which included hackers from numerous Linux
distros, and Fedora's own Warren Togami.
* A GUADEC trip report (including pictures) from Dimitris Glezos.
* A second place finish in the 2008 RoboCup World Championships,
with a report from Tim Niemueller.
In other event news:
* Sandro "red" Mathys has posted details about the upcoming Fedora
Ambassador Day EMEA.
* James Morris shared his Ottawa Linux Symposium paper with us,
which is a detailed update on SELinux.
=== Tech Tidbits
Transifex 0.3 has been released. "Transifex 0.3 is a major release,
including a lot of under-the-hood changes. We’ve added full i18n
support, and now in addition to the templates, per-module information
stored in the database, such as names and descriptions, can be
translated as well," explains project lead Dimitris Glezos.
Lorenzo Villani is working on adding the ZYpp stack into Fedora. He
explains, "It seems that with the latest releases of sat-solver, libzypp
and zypper, the whole stack has become more stable on Fedora,
especially, in the past few weeks I wasn’t able to update packages due
to various resolver’s problems, but now it seems that 'zypper up' does
its job smoothly."
Fedora Electronics Lab now has its own mailing list, and there has been
lots of discussion about this particular respin on Planet Fedora over
the past few days.
Red Hat Magazine has a great article about NetworkManager, written by
Kyle Gonzales.
=== Other Interesting Posts
Nicu Buculei gave us a detailed look at the first round of themes that
have been developed by the Art Team for Fedora 10.
David Nalley authored what might be the first in a four part series
about Fedora's new "Freedom, Friends, Features, First" marketing focus.
This post focuses on the Freedom topic.
=== Marketing
In this section, we cover the Fedora Marketing Project.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing
Contributing Writer: Pascal Calarco
=== Linus Torvalds' personal Linux distro? Fedora 9, of course
Larry Cafiero reported[1] that the creator of Linux, Linus Torvalds,
currently uses Fedora 9 "on most of his computers" as reported in a
recent interview[2]. "I've used different distributions over the years
... Fedora had fairly good support for PowerPC back when I used that, so
I grew used to it. But I actually don't care too much about the
distribution, as long as it makes it easy to install and keep reasonably
up-to-date," Torvalds added.
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-July/msg00150.html
[2]
http://www.simple-talk.com/opinion/geek-of-the-week/linus-torvalds,-geek-of-the-week/
=== Asus Eee PC Fedora Respin
Valent Turkovic asked[1] if there was interest in working on a Fedora
spin for the Eee PC. Clint Savage reported[2] that his kickstart for the
Eee is working almost perfectly, and Mathieu Bridon pointed[3] to the
[EeePc wiki page] for this activity.
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-July/msg00156.html
[2]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-July/msg00164.html
[3]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-July/msg00160.html
=== Zimbra changes license to address Fedora concerns
Rahul Sundaram reported[1] that Yahoo has responded[2] to the suggestion
that the license language for Zimbra be modified to allow it to be
consonant with the Fedora project, which now paves the way for Zimbra to
be made available in Fedora. "Our colleagues in the Fedora community
were concerned that the old version of 6.2 did not give licensees enough
certainty that they could keep exercising their license, even if they
followed its requirements. We thought this change was a reasonable
request, and we were very pleased that we were able to respond to the
Fedora community in the way they asked. Many thanks to our Fedora
friends for their input," the Yahoo spokesman explained. Jeroen Van
Meeuwen added[3] that efforts are already underway to package Zimbra for
Fedora.
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-July/msg00147.html
[2] http://www.zimbra.com/forums/announcements/19581-license-5-0-7-foss.html
[3]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-July/msg00172.html
=== Seneca College teams with FOSS projects for hands-on learning
Rahul Sundaram shared[1] a feature[2] from Linux.com detailing the
growth of the free and open source software program at Seneca College in
Toronto, Canada. Beginning this fall, thanks to Fedora, it will add the
graduate-level Linux/Unix System Administration program. The article
continues with Greg DeKoenigsberg, Fedora's liaison with Seneca, saying,
"There's a lot of knowledge that's just not taught that you need [in
order] to participate in an open source project. There's a difference in
how open source is approached [compared to] traditional software, and
it's not like you can learn it in a book. It's very much an
apprenticeship model."
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-July/msg00176.html
[2] http://www.linux.com/feature/140097
=== Intel's Moblin switches from Ubuntu in favor of Fedora
Rahul Sundaram shared[1] news reported in the UK's Register that Intel
has shifted from use of Ubuntu to Fedora. "Under the changes, the
existing Ubuntu-based kernel is out and Fedora is in, along with a set
of Gnome-compatible mobile components that updates Moblin's previous
Gnome implementation." Intel's director of Linux and open-source
strategy explained that "there was no falling out with Ubuntu, but the
move to Fedora was a technical decision based on the desire to adopt RPM
for package management." Rahul followed up with more information on this
development[3], reported later in heise open source[4].
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-July/msg00185.html
[2] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/23/moblin_reworked/
[3]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-July/msg00205.html
[4]
http://www.heise-online.co.uk/open/Intel-switches-from-Ubuntu-to-Fedora-for-Mobile-Linux--/news/111166
=== Fedora launches OLPC group
Rahul Sundaram forwarded[1] news[2] that the Fedora Project has started
a Open Laptop per Child[3] Special Interest Group to help with the
educational computing effort. Fedora will offer increased help with
package maintenance for OLPC, "maintain an excellent Sugar environment
for Fedora, including a dedicated Sugar spin; to identify opportunities
for collaboration on things such as infrastructure and localisation." A
discussion list has also been established[4] for this, and all are
welcome to join these efforts.
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-July/msg00186.html
[2] http://www.tectonic.co.za/?p=2647
[3] http://www.laptop.org/
[4] https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-olpc-list
=== Ring. Ring. It's Fedora calling
Rahul Sundaram shared[1] a story in CNET News[2] this week about Fedora
Talk[3], a VOIP project that "allows Fedora contributors to use any
standard VoIP hardware or software to sign into the Fedora system and
make and receive calls to other Fedora contributors." CNET added, "It's
an intriguing way for the Fedora community to tighten the development
process by bringing developers together. IM, mailing lists, and e-mail
are great, but talking with someone is sometimes the best way to make
things happen."
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-July/msg00207.html
[2] http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-9998526-16.html
[3] http://talk.fedoraproject.org/
=== Linux Symposium Proceedings Available
Rahul Sundaram posted[1] that the 2001-2008 proceedings of the Linux
Symposium[3] were now freely-available[4], along with the GCC Summit
Proceedings.
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-July/msg00210.html
[2] http://ols.fedoraproject.org
[3] http://www.linuxsymposium.org/
[4] http://ols.fedoraproject.org/
=== Video: Fedora Live
Rahul Sundaram shared[1] a recent article in Red Hat Magazine[2]
featuring the Fedora Project's Paul Frields talking with developer
Jeremy Katz "to discuss the Live USB feature debuted in Fedora 9 ... See
a live demo of the persistent desktop, and find out how to get more
involved in the next Fedora release."
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-July/msg00188.html
[2] http://www.redhatmagazine.com/2008/07/23/video-fedora-live/
=== Ambassadors
In this section, we cover Fedora Ambassadors Project.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors
Contributing Writer: Jeffrey Tadlock
=== FAD EMEA 2008 - Date & Location Determined
Sandro Mathys announced[1] that the data and location for FAD EMEA 2008
have been determined. It will take place in Basel, Switzerland from
2008-11-14 to 2008-11-16. Additional information is available on the FAD
EMEA 2008 wiki page[2].
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-ambassadors-list/2008-July/msg00304.html
[2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FAD/FADEMEA2008
=== Planning for Fedora 10 Release Parties
Francesco Ugolini posted[1] to the ambassadors list a request for
feedback for planning for Fedora 10 release parties. We had great
success with out Fedora 9 release parties - be sure to get your
suggestions in for planning Fedora 10 release parties in the future.
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-ambassadors-list/2008-July/msg00328.html
=== Event Reports Reminder
Max Spevack posted[1] a reminder that event reports are required if you
were the leader of an event. Event reports are also encouraged from
attendees of events as well. The event reporting guidelines page[2]
covers what should be included in an event report.
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-ambassadors-list/2008-July/msg00326.html
[2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraEvents/ReportingGuidelines
=== Developments
In this section the people, personalities and debates on the
@fedora-devel mailing list are summarized.
Contributing Writer: Oisin Feeley
=== Erratum: FWN#133 "Shark" is a JIT not a VM
Gary Benson kindly corrected an error in FWN#133 "Java, So Many Free
Choices"[1] which reported on the work being done by Red Hat engineers
to expand the availability of a FOSS Java across more architectures. The
gist of the correction is that Shark is not a Virtual Machine(VM) as
stated in the article. Gary explained that OpenJDK is composed of a VM
named HotSpot and a class library. HotSpot runs on a limited number of
architectures and so there have been two independent attempts to
increase VM coverage. One of these is pre-existing project named CACAO
which is a VM whose maintainers are implementing the OpenJDK class
interface. The other is a Red Hat initiative, named zero, to remove
architecture-specific code from HotSpot in order to make compilation on
diverse platforms easier. As zero is slow and in need of a JIT. This JIT
could well end up being Shark. Thanks to Gary for taking the time to
clarify this point. We encourage readers to correct important technical
issues and misunderstandings and can be contacted via
"news@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx".
[1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue133#Java.2C_So_Many_Free_Choices
=== New libraw1394 Rebuild Exposes Closed ACLs
A simple warning made[1] by Jarod Wilson of a soname bump of libraw1394
(which among other things allows easy switching between juju and the
older drivers) revealed that Fedora's KDE maintainers are not using open
ACLs for their packages. The issue of whether open ACLs should be used
to allow any interested community member (e.g. with a FAS account) to
start making changes without bureaucracy has been visited several times
on @fedora-devel and has been argued[1a] to be one of the exciting
"post-merge" aspects of the FedoraProject. Objections have included
those based on security (see FWN#112 "Open By Default: New FAS Groups
Proposed"[1b]) and the logistics of co-ordinating such open access (see
FWN#91 "Community Control And Documentation Of New Workflows"[1c]). At
times it has appeared that those who were non-Red Hat employees and
contributing to the pre-merge "Extras" repository were the strongest
advocates for open ACLs.
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-July/msg01159.html
[1a] http://lwn.net/Articles/237700/
[1b]
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue112#Open_By_Default:_New_FAS_Groups_Proposed
[1c]
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue91#Community_Control_And_Documentation_Of_New_Workflows
Jarod provided a short list of affected packages including kdebase and
kdebase3 and wondered whether he should "do a fancy chainbuild[2], or
just let rawhide be busted for a day?" Following advice received[3]
offlist he decided that the procedure would be to first bump and tag
each of the packages, and then from within the devel-branch of a
dependent package issue a:
[jwilson foo fedora-cvs/pkg11/devel]$ make chain-build CHAIN="libraw1394
pkg1 ... pkg10"
[2]
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers/UsingKoji#Chained.builds
[3]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-July/msg01161.html
This eventually worked[4], but first Jarod had to contact maintainers
that disallowed commit access using open ACLs and get them to do the
bump and tag in order to use the above method.
[4]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-July/msg01316.html
Early on in the chain of events Kevin Koffler noted[5] the necessity to
do this for the KDE packages. "Drago01" wondered why there were closed
ACLs to which Rex Dieter replied[6] that it was not necessary for
non-core development platform bits and he would try to change the ACLs
for them. Konrad Meyer defended[7] the choice on the basis that "KDE is
a major system component and the KDE team (which is something like 6-8
people) does a very good job of fixing things as soon as they need
fixing." Further probing for an actual reason by Rahul Sundaram resulted
in Konrad stating[8] that it was necessary to prevent people from making
mistakes and that the kernel package was handled similarly. Rahul was
unconvinced by this and Jon Stanley agreed[9] it should be possible, as
with GNOME, to use open ACLs to allow anyone to help.
[5]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-July/msg01164.html
[6]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-July/msg01192.html
[7]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-July/msg01181.html
[8]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-July/msg01223.html
[9]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-July/msg01225.html
=== XULRunner Security Update Breakage Stimulates Bodhi Discussion
After Michael Schwendt published[1] a summary of broken dependencies for
Fedora 9 it was noticed[2] by Martin Sourada that most of the problems
were due to a recent update of xulrunner which now provides gecko-libs
(see FWN#110[3].) Martin discovered that gxine, which was his particular
responsibility, did not depend on a specific version of gecko-libs and
thus removed the versioned dependencies. He suggested that a review by
carried out of the other affected packages to determine whether this was
also the case for them.
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-July/msg01175.html
[2]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-July/msg01177.html
[3]
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue110#Gecko-libs.Now.Provided.By.Xulrunnerdevel
Martin was further concerned that the policies for pushing security
updates for a stable release be examined in the light of this particular
case because it would fail to install due to all the broken
dependencies. He suggested that it ought to be possible to use chain
builds (the Koji buildsystem allows packages to be grouped into sets
during the build process and to only report success if all the packages
complete perfectly) to ensure that such breakage does not occur. He also
wondered why the security update was not mentioned on the
"-devel(-announce) list?"
Nicolas Mailhot agreed[4] strongly wondering: "why the hell is this
stuff not tested in -devel first? [...] When the update process is not
streamlined in -devel, it's no surprise it bombs in -stable when
security updates are due." The answers to these questions came from Adel
Gadllah (drago01) who replied[5] that as it was a security fix it had to
go to updates-stable immediately instead of following the normal
procedure[6]. David Nielsen interjected[7] that this method did not
deliver a quick security fix because those using, for example, epiphany
failed to get the update because the dependencies had not been properly
handled. Michael Schwendt also made[8] the same point: "Doesn't matter.
It doesn't install at all if it breaks dependencies of *installed*
packages. Not even *skip-broken helps in that case." Adel clarified[9]
that he was explaining "why it was done, not that it was the right thing
to do. As I already said, bodhi should block updates that break deps."
[4]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-July/msg01182.html
[5]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-July/msg01183.html
[6] Generally bleeding-edge changes for the next version of Fedora are
published in the "fedora-rawhide" repository, which is derived from a
CVS branch named "-devel". The "fedora-updatestesting" repository
contains bleeding edge changes for the current maintained release, the
idea being that volunteers will test them and provide feedback before
they are pushed to the "fedora-updates" repository for general consumption.
[7]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-July/msg01184.html
[8]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-July/msg01185.html
[9]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-July/msg01188.html
=== Broken Upgrade Paths Due to NEVR
A report listing packages which failed to upgrade smoothly was
emailed[1] to the list on Mon 21st. This would appear[2] to be the
output of Jesse Keating's revamped version of the old Extras script
upgradecheck (previously discussed in FWN#108 "Package EVR Problems"[3])
which examines Koji tags[4] to determine whether upgrades from one
package version to another will work.
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-July/msg01253.html
[2]
http://git.fedorahosted.org/git/?p=releng;a=blob;f=scripts/check-upgradepaths.py;hb=HEAD
[3] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue108#Package.EVR.Problems
[4] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Koji
Michael Schwendt noticed[5] that at least one reported failure, of
audacity to upgrade from "dist-f8-updates-testing" to "dist-f9-updates"
was a false positive because it omitted to take the possible
intermediate tag "dist-f9-updates-testing" into account. Jesse Keating
pondered[6] the idea and while admitting the possibility that someone
might "at one time [have] installed F8 testing updates, and then
upgraded to F9 + updates, but without F9 updates-testing. However, it's
more plausible that if they were using updates-testing on F8 that they
would upgrade to F9 + updates + updates-testing." He suggested that he
would break the testing down into two separate paths: "F8, F8-updates,
f9-updates" and "F8-updates-testing, F9-updates-testing" and also list
the person that built the broken instance instead of listing the owners
of the broken packages.
[5]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-July/msg01296.html
[6]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-July/msg01317.html
As the owner can change per branch Michael Schwendt suggested that the
pkgdb could be queried for branch-specific ownership data, but Jesse
thought that it was more interesting to know who built the package
rather than who owned it. He hoped that "the <pkg>-contact fedoraproject
org or some such gets created soon so that the script can just email
that + the person whom built the problematic package" and Seth Vidal
quickly implemented[7] this after Toshio Kuratomi made some changes to
pkgdb.
[7]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-July/msg01489.html
=== Application Installer "Amber" Provides Browser Interface to Packages
A description was posted[1] by Owen Taylor of a visual means to rate,
browse and install packaged applications in a repository. The discussion
around this revealed some differences over the advisability of providing
separate ways for ordinary end-users on the one hand and package
maintainers on the other to discover and discuss the software available
from the FedoraProject. Owen's post was to announce that he had hacked
up a web-browser plugin (a detailed README is available[2] which
includes discussion of security and cross-browser support) which used
PackageKit to allow the installation of packages selected from this
website. He had hopes that this would be "robust against inter-distro
differences in package names" and wondered "[w]hat do people think...
does this make sense as part of the PackageKit project?"
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-July/msg01433.html
[2] http://git.o/shsoup.net/cgit/packagekit-plugin/tree/README
Following a suggestion from Tom Callaway that it be integrated with
PackageDB (this is the central repository of meta-information on
packages and is currently targeted to the needs of package maintainers
and release-engineering[3] to track ownership and ACLs[4]) there were
questions from Jeff Spaleta about what that meant. Owen replied[5] with
more detail, and explained that the web application would take
information from PackageDB but that the plugin would use PackageKit (and
YUM and hence comps.xml) to display actual installable packages. He
listed other possible operations beyond simple installation of packages.
It would be possible to offer installation to any anonymous user, but
after authentication rating and commenting on packages could be
authorized for users in the FAS[6] class. Similarly, the ability to edit
package information could be authorized for package owners.
[3] https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb
[4] https://fedorahosted.org/packagedb/
[5]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-July/msg01440.html
[6] https://admin.fedoraproject.org/accounts/
Jeff emphasized[7] that he would prefer to see Owen's interface replace,
or augment, the existing PackageDB one[8] in order to increase
user-maintainer communication by simplifying and reducing the number of
interfaces. Bill Nottingham wondered[9] "Does anyone actually use
packagedb to browse for available software?" and although there were a
couple of affirmative replies there was no aggregate data presented to
answer this question. Nicolas Mailhot replied[10] with some possible
uses for expanded meta-information based upon the experience of the
Fonts SIG.
[7]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-July/msg01442.html
[8] https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb
[9]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-July/msg01445.html
[10]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-July/msg01474.html
Robin Norwood explained[11] to Jeff that the PackageDB was for one
audience "(mostly) targeted at people interested in the plumbing of
Fedora" while the new interface was "targeted at people who are looking
for applications to install and 'do stuff' with." He posted[12] a link
to the Feature page for this ApplicationInstaller. Work seems to have
progressed quite far with both the web-application side, which is
tentatively named "Amber" and is available for proof-of-concept
testing[13] and also with Owen's plugin.
[11]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-July/msg01460.html
[12] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/ApplicationInstaller
[13] http://publictest10.fedoraproject.org/amber
Jeff re-iterated[14] his point that "driving users to a different site
than the package maintainers... and allowing them to comment [is] going
to cause a communication gap" and characterized this as "driveby
commenting and rating." Matthias Clasen did not accept that the use
cases and requirements were the same as those for PackageDB and argued
that "[t]his is not an effort to improve package quality or gain new
contributors. This is an effort to make life of users better. It is not
about packages, but about applications." Robin was[15] against Jeff's
idea of a "monolithic app" and emphasized that he was using existing
infrastructure to provide a new interface and also planning easy export
of the data. He envisioned this data as providing, for example, a feed
of comments about each package to PackageDB: "More of a semantic web
type idea than an isolated database or a 'one-stop shop'."
[14]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-July/msg01472.html
[15]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-July/msg01481.html
=== RPM Inspires Intel Moblin2 Shift From Ubuntu
An excited Peter Robinson copied[1] a link to "The Register" to the
list. The article claimed that Intel's next version of "Moblin"[2]
(cunningly codenamed Moblin2) would be replacing the "Ubuntu-based
kernel" with the Fedora kernel and cited Dirk Hohndel. Specifically it
attributed a desire to "move to Fedora [as] a technical decision based
on the desire to adopt RPM for package management [and also that] having
a vibrant community push is the winning factor." The article has since
been rebuffed[3] by Hohndel in a comment on one of his blogs as "not
only low on detail, it's also high in content that's made up or blown
out of proportion" but he does confirm that "we decided to move to an
rpm based distribution as that gave us better build tools and most
importantly a better way to manage the licenses under which the
individual packages are released."
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-July/msg01381.html
[2] Moblin is a GNU/Linux-based software stack for Mobile Internet
Devices which includes Xorg,GStreamer,ALSA,the MatchboxWM, GTK, Cairo,
Pango, D-Bus, Avahi, Evolution Data Server and more. In order to make
life easy for developers a Moblin Image Creator makes it easy to create
a small 350-600MB binary image for a particular architecture. Moblin
explicitly aims to provide an alternative to GNOME and KDE.
http://www.moblin.org/resource.center.php
[3] http://www.hohndel.org/communitymatters/moblin/moblin-at-oscon/
Commentary on @fedora-devel tended to cautious optimism mixed with a
desire for a lot more information. Jeff Spaleta asked[4] whether the
idea was to have Moblin2 be a "part of the larger Fedora project or is
it going to be a downstream derived distribution that will include
components such that it can not carry the Fedora name?" and broached the
idea that Moblin2 might be a candidate for a Secondary Architecture (see
FWN#90[5] and FWN#92[6].) DavidWoodhouse (posting with an Intel.com sig)
also liked[7] the idea of a Moblin2 SIG producing a Fedora spin for MIDs
(Mobile Internet Devices.)
[4]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-July/msg01386.html
[5]
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue90#Fedora.Secondary.Architectures.Proposal
[6] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue92#Secondary.Arch.Proposal.Cont
[7]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-July/msg01417.html
While "yersinia" thought that the emphasis on RPM was interesting Hansde
Goede was intrigued[8] by the emphasis on community activity. Hans
suggested that Jeff Spaleta contact Dirk Hohndel to emphasize the
dynamic nature of the FOSS community behind Fedora. Jeff suggested that
Karsten Wade could meet with Dirk at this week's OSCON[9]. Ex-Red Hat
star employee Arjanvande Ven volunteered[10] to do what he could to help
make contact with Dirk, describing himself as "on the other side of a
cube wall" from him. In response to Rahul Sundaram's request for
concrete information from Intel Arjan responded[11] that he would do his
best to get the right people to make contact, but that much of the
speculation on @fedora-devel concerned topics which have an "eh we don't
know yet" answer. He also repeated cautions against believing anything
which journalists write.
[8]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-July/msg01397.html
[9] http://en.oreilly.com/oscon2008/public/content/home
[10]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-July/msg01447.html
[11]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-July/msg01523.html
Paul Frields followed up[12] with details of a meeting at OSCON with
senior Fedora hackers. It seemed that the ability to use OpenSuSE's Open
Build System (which is based on RPM) was one of the main motivations
behind Intel's move. Apparently Koji (the Fedora Project's buildsystem)
lacks some specific functionality. Discussion between Paul Frields and
Jeff Spaleta centered[13] around whether the apparent Moblin2 plan of
acting as a downstream derivative of the Fedora kernel would allow them
to garner community contributions and whether this mattered anyway given
Intel's vast resources.
[12]
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-July/msg00198.html
[13]
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-July/msg00214.html
Arthur Pemberton thought that this was a good opportunity to take on
some of the anti-RPM and anti-YUM misinformation which had been spread
about. David Nielsen thought it was best to merely demand proof from
those spreading FUD. Seth Vidal conceded[14] that perhaps not enough had
been done to publicize the improvements in YUM and RPM over the last few
years and cited[15] a particular case-study of a smartpm user comparing
it with YUM to the advantage of the latter.
[14]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-July/msg01503.html
[15]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-July/msg01507.html
=== Artwork
In this section, we cover the Fedora Artwork Project.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork
Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei
=== Nodoka development
After Martin Sourada laid out some plans last week for the Nodoka GTK2
theme engine development, he updated the Fedora Art list with news about
the topic: "Considering that the Feature freeze for F10 is nearing and I
haven't finished yet with the sketching, I'll push it for Fedora 11,
while in Fedora 10 we'll have new notification theme [1], maybe the Echo
icons and some minor improvements to the gtk theme/engine."
[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-July/msg00217.html
=== Gathering feed-back about Fedora 10 theme proposals
After the first round of the theme creation process for Fedora 10 ended,
Nicu Buculei started gathering[1] feed-back from the community (everyone
is invited to participated, including the Fedora Weekly News readers):
"Since the first round for F10 themes just ended, I wrote to my
(infamous) blog an article[2] listing all the proposals, including
thumbnails and descriptions and asked for feedback (noting that the
preferred way is this mailing list). Also posted about it on
FedoraForum[3]."
[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-July/msg00222.html
[2] http://nicubunu.blogspot.com/2008/07/fedora-10-themes-round-1.html
[3] http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?p=1050722
=== A possible Bluecurve revival
Andy Fitzsimon shared[1] on the Fedora Art list a theme mockup "I didn't
design it specifically for fedora but I hope someone here finds it
useful for future mocks" and very quickly Hylke Bons expressed his
interest[2] and idea about using it in combination with his own
project[3] "I think this will fit well in my attempt to ressurect
Bluecurve" (Bluecurve is the venerable theme introduced in Red Hat Linux
8 and used as a default until Fedora 6).
[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-July/msg00225.html
[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-July/msg00226.html
[3] http://bomahy.nl/hylke/wip/bluetwist.png
=== Security Advisories
In this section, we cover Security Advisories from fedora-package-announce.
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-package-announce
Contributing Writer: David Nalley
=== Fedora 9 Security Advisories
* mantis-1.1.2-1.fc9 -
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-July/msg00801.html
* dbmail-2.2.9-1.fc9 -
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-July/msg01094.html
* libetpan-0.54-1.fc9 -
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-July/msg01093.html
* php-5.2.6-2.fc9 -
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-July/msg01021.html
* ruby-1.8.6.230-1.fc9 -
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-July/msg01016.html
* gnutls-2.0.4-3.fc9 -
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-July/msg00980.html
* licq-1.3.5-2.fc9 -
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-July/msg00879.html
* perl-5.10.0-27.fc9 -
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-July/msg00874.html
* linuxdcpp-1.0.1-3.fc9 -
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-July/msg01106.html
* sipp-3.1-2.fc9 -
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-July/msg01160.html
=== Fedora 8 Security Advisories
* wireshark-1.0.2-1.fc8 -
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-July/msg00798.html
* asterisk-1.4.21.2-1.fc8 -
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-July/msg00839.html
* mantis-1.1.2-1.fc8 -
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-July/msg00813.html
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