February 2020 - Arch-dev-public - lists.archlinux.org

[arch-dev-public] Mkinitcpio replacement with Dracut
by Giancarlo Razzolini 19 Feb '21

19 Feb '21

Hi All, Recently, Dave announced his intention to step down as mkinitcpio maintainer. I have been handling a few things on it, made some small changes to our mkinitcpio-busybox [0], closed a few old bugs, while also made sure some of the other bug reports are still valid. [1] I have been testing a few patches to mkinitcpio for a while to fix those bugs, but last week Dave and I had a discussion on IRC and we agreed that we could spend better time contributing somewhere else than keeping working with mkinitcpio. Currently mkinitcpio cannot boot from NFS properly, mknitcpio-nfs-utils [2] uses very old code. Even though ipconfig works, it has several drawbacks compared to using more modern tools. Not to mention that we have two use cases for mkinitcpio, which are base and systemd enabled initramfs. Even though we use by default our base enabled initramfs, we have to support systemd related issues and we have to keep developing our systemd hooks. I have been looking into dracut for some time now, I copied some stuff from them on a few of my own scripts and they also have an actual test suite, that we currently can't use on Arch, but I plan to change that. With this in mind, I have packaged dracut for Arch and put it on Extra [3]. I have been using a dracut initramfs for a while now to boot my encrypted partition. Surprisingly, I only had to create a small patch to one of the dm-crypt module scripts [4] In this initial phase I want to ask as many of you to test this as a replacement to mkinitcpio in your setups, as many as possible, and in as many scenarios as possible. We will probably have to keep both packages on our repos for a long time, but once we are confident it's a good fit, we can replace mkinitcpio on our iso and base, so new installs get dracut by default. Please, drop in your comments as well. Regards, Giancarlo Razzolini [0] https://git.archlinux.org/svntogit/packages.git/commit/trunk/PKGBUILD?h=pac… [1] https://bugs.archlinux.org/index.php?string=mkinitcpio&project=0 [2] https://git.archlinux.org/mkinitcpio-nfs-utils.git/ [3] https://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/dracut/ [4] https://git.archlinux.org/svntogit/packages.git/tree/trunk/0001-90crypt-Cha…

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[arch-dev-public] Spring cleaning (moving orphaned packages from [community] to AUR)
by Alexander F Rødseth 01 May '20

01 May '20

Hello, It's time for the semi-yearly package cleanup of [community] packages, as is tradition. I have gathered a list of "unneeded orphans" in [community] (packages that currently has no maintainer, and no other package depends on them) from the excellent list on our web page. TUs and Devs, please adopt, if you're interested: adapta-kde - Adapta theme for KDE Plasma 5 agg - High Quality Rendering Engine for C++ aide - A file integrity checker and intrusion detection program. arch - A modern and remarkable revision control system. arc-kde - Arc theme for KDE Plasma 5 aspell-it - Italian dictionary for aspell aspell-ru - Russian dictionary for aspell bar - A script for showing progress bars. bomberclone - Clone of the game Atomic Bomberman cellwriter - A grid-entry natural handwriting input panel. curseofwar - Fast-paced RTS/Action game with ncurses interface dcfldd - DCFL (DoD Computer Forensics Lab) dd replacement with hashing dumb-a4 - IT, XM, S3M and MOD player library (for Allegro 4) easystroke - Use mouse gestures to initiate commands and hotkeys. eclipse-cpp - Highly extensible IDE for C++ eclipse-java - Highly extensible IDE for Java eclipse-javascript - Highly extensible IDE for JavaScript eclipse-jee - Highly extensible IDE for JEE eclipse-php - Highly extensible IDE for PHP eclipse-rust - Highly extensible IDE for Rust esmtp - An easy SMTP forwarder. gimp-dbp - David's batch processor for the GIMP gimp-plugin-fblur - Makes out of focus with luminosity and depth gimp-plugin-lqr - Plugin for The GIMP providing Liquid Rescale gimp-plugin-wavelet-denoise - Tool to reduce noise in each channel of an image separately gimp-refocus - A sharpen plugin for gimp using FIR Wiener filtering glide - Dependency management and vendoring for Go projects glitz - OpenGL image compositing library gnunet-gtk - A frontend for GNUnet gtk-theme-switch2 - Gtk2 theme switcher gvmd - greenbone-vulnerability-manager gvm-tools - greenbone-vulnerability-manager tools ifuse - A fuse filesystem to access the contents of an iPhone or iPod Touch iverilog - Icarus Verilog compiler and simulation tool javasqlite - Java wrapper including a basic JDBC driver for the SQLite 2/3 database engine matrix-appservice-irc - Node.js IRC bridge for Matrix minbif - An IRC gateway to IM networks that uses libpurple. mod_wsgi - Python WSGI adapter module for Apache monica - Monitor calibration tool mythes-pl - Polish thesaurus ode - High performance library for simulating rigid body dynamics openvas - Vulnerability scanning Daemon pinta - Drawing/editing program modeled after Paint.NET. It's goal is to provide a simplified alternative to GIMP for casual users processing - Programming environment for creating images, animations and interactions projectm-pulseaudio - Music visualizer which uses 3D accelerated iterative image based rendering (pulseaudio) projectm-sdl - Music visualizer which uses 3D accelerated iterative image based rendering (sdl) python2-pyxmpp - Python XMPP and Jabber implementation based on libxml2 python-pyinsane - Python library to access and use image scanners qtspim - New user interface for spim, a MIPS simulator. rdiff-backup - A utility for local/remote mirroring and incremental backups. remacs - Emacs with parts of it written in Rust steghide - Embeds a message in a file by replacing some of the least significant bits surf - A simple web browser based on WebKit/GTK+. tabbed - Simple generic tabbed fronted to xembed aware applications. transset-df - A patched version of X.Org's transset with added functionality. tuxpaint-config - Tux Paint configuration tool uncrustify - A source code beautifier vim-jellybeans - Colorful, dark color scheme, inspired by ir_black and twilight vim-ultisnips - TextMate-style snippets for Vim. wren - Small, fast, class-based concurrent scripting language xautomation - Controls X from the command line and does "visual scraping". xbindkeys - Launch shell commands with your keyboard or your mouse under X zapcc - C++ compiler based on Clang, but significantly faster zeal - An offline API documentation browser I'll wait two weeks before adding them to AUR, running both `db-remove` and `svn rm` on the unmaintained packages. PS. If unmaintained orphans in [core] could be moved to [extra], and unmaintained orphans in [extra] could be moved to [community], that could be a nice "trickle down" effect and would be an appreciated cleanup as well, but that is just my opinion. To quote our newly elected leader, in connection with the previous spring cleaning: > Cleanup is always good > > - Levente Polyak -- Best regards, Alexander F. Rødseth / xyproto

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[arch-dev-public] Looking for an Arch ISO maintainer
by Jelle van der Waa 30 Mar '20

30 Mar '20

Hi all, Gerardo has stepped down as Arch ISO maintainer, which makes archiso unmaintained. I've asked Pierres if he was interested in maintaining the project and he is willing to do bug fixes when required but no major maintenance. Which means that we are looking for a new maintainer :-) To be completely honest, I am not sure what maintenance archiso requires but there are a few things I would love to see: - Proper CI / automated testing of the archiso - Reproducible archiso (patches on the mailing list) [1] - Support secure boot [2] - Accessibility improvements (patches available on the mailing list) [3] Please reply if you are interested in becoming an archiso maintainer, so far Alad has shown interested. [1] https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/63683?project=6 [2] https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/53864?project=6 [3] https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/63166?project=6 -- Jelle van der Waa

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[arch-dev-public] News draft: firewalld>=0.8.1-2 update requires manual intervention
by Jan Alexander Steffens 29 Feb '20

29 Feb '20

The firewalld package prior to version 0.8.1-2 was missing the compiled python modules. This has been fixed in 0.8.1-2, so the upgrade will need to overwrite the untracked pyc files created. If you get errors like these firewalld: /usr/lib/python3.8/site-packages/firewall/__pycache__/__init__.cpython-38.pyc exists in filesystem firewalld: /usr/lib/python3.8/site-packages/firewall/__pycache__/client.cpython-38.pyc exists in filesystem firewalld: /usr/lib/python3.8/site-packages/firewall/__pycache__/dbus_utils.cpython-38.pyc exists in filesystem ...many more... when updating, use pacman -Suy --overwrite /usr/lib/python3.8/site-packages/firewall/\* to perform the upgrade.

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[arch-dev-public] "date" C++ library packaging
by Brett Cornwall 24 Feb '20

24 Feb '20

I made the silly mistake of posting first to [arch-general]. Sorry! On 2020-02-13 09:24, Morten Linderud wrote: >On Thu, Feb 13, 2020 at 12:09:27AM -0800, Brett Cornwall via arch-general wrote: >> Waybar [1] just had an update where it pulled in a project called "date" >> [2]. I'm hesitant to package this under the name "date" since GNU coreutils >> shares a binary with that name. But this isn't a totally obscure library. >> >> Should I persuade upstream to change the name? Should I package it under >> another name? Or should I lay claim to the unused "date" package name and go >> on with my life? > >"chrono-date" could maybe work as an alternative name? > >I'm unsure why this is in [arch-general] and not [arch-dev-public] :) On 2020-02-13 02:24, David C. Rankin wrote: >And with the note that much of Howard Hinnant's date/time library is being >incorporated into the next C++ standard. Quite a feather in anyone's cap. Does anyone have any strong opinions?

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[arch-dev-public] Can anyone take nvidia-390xx?
by Sven-Hendrik Haase 23 Feb '20

23 Feb '20

I don't run nvidia-390xx on any of my devices. I would appreciate it if somebody could take those drivers. I will continue maintaining the mainline nvidia package.

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[arch-dev-public] Potential removal of Chromium in ~2 months
by Evangelos Foutras 22 Feb '20

22 Feb '20

Just a quick heads up that I am considering dropping Chromium from [extra] a week or two before the Chromium 82 stable release (~April 28). The reason for this is that our API keys no longer work for geolocation requests and there is no clear upstream guidance on how to resolve this issue. [1] When I created these API keys back in 2013, there was a semi-official effort by the Chrome Team to support distro builds of Chromium in regard to accessing Google APIs; a few minor hiccups along the way were quickly resolved. I feel this arrangement is starting to fall apart (in spite of some upstream Chrome developers' best efforts). To make a long story short, I consider broken geolocation sufficient reason for removal. I don't mind it being broken for my own use, but shipping a package with broken functionality due to lack of upstream support does not sit well with me. To protect against systems with outdated Chromium (following the stable release of version 82), at the beginning of April I intend to post a news item about the need to switch to another browser. That is assuming no solution is found and nobody objects to the removal or wishes to continue maintenance of the package with reduced functionality. [1] https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/chromium-packagers/Z…

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[arch-dev-public] Vacationing
by David Runge 21 Feb '20

21 Feb '20

Hi all, I'll be out until Wednesday (2020-02-26) in a location with likely very limited internet access and will not be updating packages. If there are any urgent updates required, of course feel free to do them! In the case of libgit2 rebuilds, I got stuck on ruby-rugged, as a subset of the integration tests fail with the new version of libgit2 (and a different subset with the current version of libgit2). I will not be touching this until then. Again: If the upgrade proves to be urgent, feel free to spend time on this. Thanks! :) Best, David -- https://sleepmap.de

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[arch-dev-public] planet.archlinux.org news proposal
by Jelle van der Waa 20 Feb '20

20 Feb '20

Hi, The new planet.archlinux.org has a different implementation and RSS feed url. I've added fallback urls for two variants of the RSS feed but would like users to switch to the new url so a news post seemed appropriate. News proposal below: # Planet Arch Linux migration The software behind planet.archlinux.org was implemented in Python 2 and no longer maintained upstream. This functionality has now been implemented in archlinux.org's archweb backend which is actively maintained by offers a slightly different experience. The most notable change is the offered feeds and the feed location. Archweb only offers an Atom feed which is located at https://archlinux.org/feeds/planet.

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[arch-dev-public] Archweb update
by Jelle van der Waa 17 Feb '20

17 Feb '20

Hi, A new archweb has been deployed with the following notable changes: * Implement planet functionality for archweb, to replace planet.archlinux.org which is Python 2 and not going to be ported. Every user on archweb can configure the website and website_rss urls in their profile which will be shown on planet after a systemd service pulls the RSS feeds in. [1] [2] Note that the implementation is a bit different from a normal planet, since only a limited amount of text is saved in archweb and the HTML is "purified" using python-bleach. It is mostly aimed at aggregating our feeds. * Add new RSS feeds for stable / non stable repos [3] Note that soon planet.archlinux.org will point to archweb and the old planet will die. [1] https://www.archlinux.org/devel/profile/ [2] https://www.archlinux.org/planet/ [3] https://www.archlinux.org/feeds/

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