November 2025 - Arch-dev-public - lists.archlinux.org

new unstable repositories
by Christian Hesse 06 Jan '26

06 Jan '26

Hello everybody, for some time I used to push rc release for some packages (namely systemd & util-linux) to core-testing. This broke once, when a package was built against that rc release and thus did depend on new symbols, then finally was moved before the package it was built against. After that I pushed all the rc releases to a public personal repository, anybody interested could test from there. But I think the audience was a lot smaller, and last systemd release revealed some unexpected regressions *after* final release. That situation is not any better, especially when rc releases in Arch were a major factor in finding regressions early. At Arch Summit 2025 we had a chat about that situation and discussed several ideas. In the end we came up with one reasonable solution: We should introduce new repositories [core-unstable] and [extra-unstable] for this kind of testing. People would still have to enable these repositories, but I guess chances are higher than for my personal repository. I guess we have three places that need to be touched: * create repositories on servers (-> DevOps) * dbscripts * devtools Anything more? Feedback is welcome, same for other ideas - this is not set in stone and I am open for anything that works for me/us. Thanks! -- main(a){char*c=/* Schoene Gruesse */"B?IJj;MEH" "CX:;",b;for(a/* Best regards my address: */=0;b=c[a++];) putchar(b-1/(/* Chris cc -ox -xc - && ./x */b/42*2-3)*42);}

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systemd v259 pre-releases
by Christian Hesse 18 Dec '25

18 Dec '25

Hello everybody, the systemd development team has pushed the first pre-release for the upcoming v259 release. Please see the NEWS [0] for details. As announced in the PKGBUILD [1] I have prepared packages and pushed them to my personal testing repository. Have a look at this if you are brave and want to have a first look. Happy testing! [0] https://github.com/systemd/systemd/blob/v259-rc1/NEWS [1] https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/packaging/packages/systemd/-/blob/ma… -- main(a){char*c=/* Schoene Gruesse */"B?IJj;MEH" "CX:;",b;for(a/* Best regards my address: */=0;b=c[a++];) putchar(b-1/(/* Chris cc -ox -xc - && ./x */b/42*2-3)*42);}

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Fwd: Looking for feedback on CONFIG_MODULE_HASHES for Linux
by Robin Candau 10 Dec '25

10 Dec '25

Hi everyone, As discussed during this year's Arch summit, Thomas is seeking help / support from projects that could benefit from his patch set which aims to enable reproducible kernel packages for Linux distributions (see the forwarded mail below). As far as I can tell, this is something we would be interested in. I think it would be nice if we could "officially" claim our interest as "Arch Linux" to hopefully provide some assistance to Thomas for his incoming discussion with upstream. Does any of the kernel packages maintainers on our side wants to jump in (or anyone else interested with some kernel knowledge, I guess)? -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: Looking for feedback on CONFIG_MODULE_HASHES for Linux Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2025 21:10:58 +0100 From: Thomas Weißschuh via rb-general <rb-general(a)lists.reproducible-builds.org> Reply-To: General discussions about reproducible builds <rb-general(a)lists.reproducible-builds.org> To: rb-general(a)lists.reproducible-builds.org CC: Thomas Weißschuh <thomas(a)t-8ch.de> Hi everyone, I am the author of the CONFIG_MODULE_HASHES patchset [0] for the Linux kernel which aims to enable reproducible kernel packages for Linux distributions. My goal is to reignite development and continue with the upstream process. To have a better base to argue with I'd like to get some confirmation that distributions have looked at the patches and do intent to adapt this scheme when it is available in the mainline kernel. That should help me get some leverage with the upstream maintainers. The current form of the patches can be found at [1], they are only slightly adapted from the previous submission to LKML. Remaining open topics before the next submission are proper IMA support and stripping of modules. Future changes may introduce more hash algorithms and performance improvements, but these should not be relvant for now. So if you are packaging Linux for your distribution, have looked at my patches and are eager to use them, please let me know. My plan is to talk with the upstream maintainers at the upcoming Linux Plumbers Conference on 11th of December. Thanks, Thomas [0] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250429-module-hashes-v3-0-00e9258def9e@weiss… [1] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/thomas.weissschuh/linux.git…

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Archive repos snapshot changes
by Kristian Klausen 09 Nov '25

09 Nov '25

Hi all, We (DevOps) want to reduce [the I/O stress][1] on the archive server (archive.archlinux.org) by reducing the numbers of inodes (currently 55 millions). Most of these inodes (52,6 millions) originates from the daily snapshot (64k inodes) of the repositories. Going forward only the database files and the "sources" directory will be included in the snapshot (~120 inodes + ~2400 inodes for "sources") and all HTTP requests for package files will be redirected to the relevant package at https://archive.archlinux.org/packages/. E.g. https://archive.archlinux.org/repos/2025/11/02/core/os/x86_64/linux-6.17.6.… -> https://archive.archlinux.org/packages/l/linux/linux-6.17.6.arch1-1-x86_64.… Package files from existing snapshots will be removed at a later date. The "sources" directory will be removed at a later date, when a proper replacement is in place. If no concerns are raised before 2025-11-21 EOD, we will move forward with the changes. [1] All inodes must be traveresed for backup and hardlinking Cheers, Kristian Klausen DevOps

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Dropping qt5-webengine
by Antonio Rojas 08 Nov '25

08 Nov '25

Hi, Qt5 is EOL since May. In particular, qt5-webengine's Chromium ships with unfixed vulnerabilities. Its code is bitrotting, which also makes it a costly package to maintain due to the frequent API changes in its dependencies (I had to give up on system ffpmeg and switch to its ancient bundled version, and currently doesn't build against ICU 78). I therefore think it's wise to drop it from our repos. Its remaining reverse dependencies are: csoundqt - can be built without it by disabling remote debugging support, MR at [1] fcitx-libpinyin - archived upstream for over a year globalprotect-openconnect - very out of date, a new version switching to wbkitgtk and rust is available in testing. kchmviewer - dead upstream (no activity in 4 years) qmc2 - dead upstream (no activity in 1.5 years) wiznote - dead upstream (no activity in 4 years) openshot - the only case of a (semi-)maintained application still unported to Qt6 - there was an attempt 3 years ago [2] aborted due to some drama and no signs of new efforts since then, porting is non-trivial. If there are no objections (that include an offer to pick up maintenance of the package), I will drop it and all its unported reverse dependencies in a few days. [1] https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/packaging/packages/csoundqt/-/merge_… [2] https://github.com/OpenShot/openshot-qt/pull/4836

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GitLab unavailable at the moment
by Jelle van der Waa 05 Nov '25

05 Nov '25

Hi All, GitLab is experiencing some high load due to unknown reasons, devops is investigating. Expect issues when updating packages so maybe postpone them if you can. Greetings, Jelle

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News Draft: waydroid >= 1.5.4-3 update may require manual intervention
by George Hu 05 Nov '25

05 Nov '25

The `waydroid` package prior to version `1.5.4-2` (including `aur/waydroid`) creates byte-compiled Python files (.pyc) at runtime which were untracked by pacman. This issue has been fixed in 1.5.4-3, where byte-compiling these files is now done during the packaging process. As a result, the upgrade may overwrite the unowned files created in previous versions. If you encounter errors like the following during the update: ``` error: failed to commit transaction (conflicting files) waydroid: /usr/lib/waydroid/tools/__pycache__/__init__.cpython-313.pyc exists in filesystem waydroid: /usr/lib/waydroid/tools/actions/__pycache__/__init__.cpython-313.pyc exists in filesystem waydroid: /usr/lib/waydroid/tools/actions/__pycache__/app_manager.cpython-313.pyc exists in filesystem ``` You can safely remove the conflicting files by running the following command before upgrading: ```sh find /usr/lib/waydroid/tools/ -type d -name __pycache__ -exec sudo rm -rf '{}' + ``` -- Best Regards, George Hu / Integral

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mkinitcpio v40, packaging changes and kernel-install
by Morten Linderud 04 Nov '25

04 Nov '25

Yo, I'm dropping the new `mkinitcpio` v40 release into [core-testing] right after this email. Generally the changes are not super interesting, but we got a new build system with meson for this release. This has given us the option to enable and disable the default hooks for `mkinitcpio` during building. As a result I have made two packaging decisions! # Disabled fallback image creation for new installs. Generally they are not super useful and people that need them can enable them if they would like too. This is only affects new installs as we can't change the hook files on existing installs. # Switched over to `systemd` hooks by default. This is generally a change I think we should have done a long time ago. The systemd side of our initramfs is getting a lot of changes thanks to systemd moving the needle forward, however our busybox hooks are not getting any of these improvements and have generally stalled for years. I have swapped things over on our side, and will continue to maintain the busybox hooks upstream. Further release notes can be found here: https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/mkinitcpio/mkinitcpio/-/releases/v40 # kernel-install Beyond this next on my todo is to see if we can move us wholesale away from the custom libalpm hooks we currently have to using `kernel-install`. This is going to make things much easier for us and users to swap between initrd and uki generators. It would also allow us to simplify our kernel installation and boot creation as we can probably automatically generate configs with hooks. I plan on writing a rough outline of my idea to arch-dev-public before doing a RFC, mostly because I haven't completely decided on how we would like to do this smoothly and people might have better ideas then me. -- Morten Linderud PGP: 9C02FF419FECBE16

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