ArchLinux Status Report, 2007-10-22

And another week goes by. Hectic for me, and I'm sure others too. Sadly, I got very little of what I hoped accomplished.

So I'll be sure to revisit those items this time.

Just to be clear here, because I don't think I expressed this properly:

The tasks listed here are things I'd _like_ to see done. I'm 100% positive there are other things that need doing, but if you let _me_ worry about that, it will lift some weight off of all of us.

What I'm saying is this: if you see some sort of larger task that we should all be a part of, let me know, and I will deal with delegation and all that fun stuff so you don't have to. And if you have some free time, check the list I have here.

== Newsworthy Items ==

* New Announcement Mailing List

In a bit of irony, this will be the first email to this new list, I believe.

Please try and use this list for all official announcements, until I sit down and setup rss2email on gerolde for the front page news.

== Completed Tasks ==

* New initscripts in testing

Looks like we closed out 4 or 5 bugs with this initscripts package, so congrats guys.

In addition, we've moved the initscripts code out of our package tree:

http://projects.archlinux.org/git/?p=initscripts.git;a=summary

* git project owners

I've setup all our code projects with real owners and groups, so we can more effectively manage this stuff.

So now we have real people to point fingers at, yay!

You can see the list here: http://projects.archlinux.org/git/

* AUFS support patch added to kernel26

A small patch was added to our kernel to support building AUFS out-of-tree from the kernel.

This means that we'll also see aufs packages in extra soon.

* New release named

Our next ISO release, codenamed "Hardcore", is almost ready to go, and will be released at the beginning of next month. Be prepared for a good old round of testing starting this week.

== Pending Tasks, Short Term ==

* Core rebuild

With the release of the new glibc, we want to, at the very least, rebuild all of the core repo to take advantage of the latest changes.

Ref: http://archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2007-October/002441.html

Extra will be much harder to do, so we should attack the core repo first. Lets focus on that for now, and complete a rebuild of extra as the next step.

* License Updates

Travis has provided us a list of packages that have broken or improper licenses. This stuff is becoming more and more important, so I'd like to get some supervision here as soon as possible.

This looks like it's a task that pairs well with the core rebuild and extra cleanup. So, anyone participating in those tasks should keep this list in mind.

Travis, would it be possible to get this list on the dev wiki? Or possibly setup as a todo list?

Ref: http://archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2007-October/002505.html

* New logo competition

Travis is spearheading this competition for our new logo. Sometime this week, we should get things started, as we have all the rules down.

There is, however, a question of legality raised by Simo. http://archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2007-October/002494.html

If anyone has some insight here, it'd be helpful. We need to address this before we move forward with this competition.

* The dividing line: extra and community

Last time, we had this discussion, and it didn't go all that much farther.

The question is this: What defines 'extra'? We seemed to talk a big game, but no decision was really reached.

So, let us revisit this thread if possible: http://archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2007-October/002263.html

Do we want to go with Damir's suggestion and make "mantle" and "crust", or would we rather stick with the current layout and make extra the "mantle" and community the "crust" ?

* Package and Orphan Cleanup

And again, I've dropped the ball here.

We have a list of packages here: https://www.archlinux.org/wiki/Repo%20Cleanup/

If anyone has some freetime, could you help me figure out what needs to go where, perhaps with another column on that page?

Could we annotate the list with what should move to community and what should move to unsupported?

In addition, is there any way someone would want to export this list to the public wiki for review by the TUs?

* DVD and Additional Package ISO Lists

This item has been pending for some time. Discussion was heavy when this was first brought up, but now no one seems concerned about additional ISOs for packages.

https://www.archlinux.org/wiki/ISO-Packages/

So, here's the ultimatum: either we at least add a few packages here, or we decide against doing this at all.

Should we be distributing additional CDs/DVDs like this?

* Unified chroot build tools

I have some minor modifications still pending, but this should be ready to go this week.

Andy's already done some testing and reported some errors. If you guys could try and go through here and test, that'd be great. Any criticism is appreciated.

http://code.phraktured.net/?p=devtools.git;a=summary

* Perl policy

I've created a bug collector for Perl policy changes: http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/8374

It would be nice if anyone vested in perl on Arch would help out here. Patches for PKGBUILDs are always appretiated.

== Pending Tasks, Long Term ==

* Getting rid of CVS

This is a LONG time coming. We've been sitting on CVS for some time, and many of us (including myself) feel that it's time to move on.

We've tried to discuss how to do this numerous times, but hit a brick wall that seems to be made of lack-of-work and I-don't-want-to-change.

Thankfully, Jason stepped up to the plate and provided us with a working SVN implementation of a new PKGBUILD repo setup:

http://archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2007-October/002308.html

If anyone else has something to show for this, don't be shy, let us see it. For some reason apathy overtakes this topic whenever it's discussed, and Id love to prevent that from happening again.

* Pacman 3.1 Release

http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/8109

Ah, another stagnating task. Dan's been pushing some interesting patches into git, but haven't got many of these big bugs closed.

Dan, could you let me know when you're free this week? We could sit down and 'sprint' a few of these bugs away.

* DB Script Rewrite

This item is going to become more and more important if we change repo layouts (see above).

I'd like to split this task up into a few actionable portions: a) Get the DB scripts setup in a git repo like everything else b) Find an "owner" who wants to read through the code and address what would need to change if we changed SCMs. c) Try

* Official pacbuild usage

http://archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2007-October/001944.html

We have an official git repo for pacbuild sitting here: http://projects.archlinux.org/git/?p=pacbuild.git;a=summary

I don't think we've had any news on this front. We only have a small contingent of developers actually writing code, so this is a difficult one.

I'd love to get someone in place actually working on pacbuild fulltime, as it's a very important tool for us.

Do we have any python coders among us that want to show their mettle?

* 'Continuous Integration' setup / machine

Still an item on here. I think we're going to wait and see how we move our repo SCM in order to do this, as it'd really be just a hook to that SCM.

* Modernize our Dashboard

I have some documentation on doing this, I want to finalize it and possibly setup a test instance on one of my machines at home for us to play with.

Eliott, Simo: I'd still like to get a sanitized git repo up for the web code, so the public can play with it as well.

Is either of you available to do this sometime this week?

* Architecture Independent Repos

This one also seems to have gone by the wayside. What happened to the flare we had for this, or are we all waiting for someone else to do the work?

http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/8153

Action Items: a) Update devtools to support arch=(all) by tagging for BOTH CURRENT and CURRENT64 b) Update DB scripts to support arch=(all) by running DB scripts for BOTH architectures. c) Test. Test. Test.

* ArchCon 2009: Big Baaad Idea

http://archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2007-September/001614.html

Ah ArchCon. There was a burst of enthusiasm at first, but it died down.

I wonder what country would be best? Is the rest of the world still scared to come here to the US? Or should we go to Canada?