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

Official Arch Linux image for WSL
by Robin Candau 03 Mar '25

03 Mar '25

Hi everyone, I'm writing this mail to collect thoughts and interests about providing an official Arch Linux image for WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) [1]. Indeed, after a quick related discussion over on IRC, I started tinkering with this and I personally would be eventually interested in proposing this "officially", if that's of interest. This proposal is inspired by the related Fedora one [2] (which was accepted and planned for Fedora 42). # Benefits An official Arch Linux image for WSL would provide an easy way for people to give Arch Linux a try directly from their Windows system, making our distro more "discoverable" and accessible. Additionally, some people may have no other choice but to use Windows in specific situations (despite not necessarily being the best choice for their needs / duties), e.g. on their company's workstation (like it's the case for me). While WSL consists of an acceptable solution to get access to a Linux environment in such situations, the lack of an official image for Arch Linux either "suggests" the use of a different distribution or "forces" people to rely on unofficial Arch Linux WSL images (which quality may vary). # Distribution / Installation WSL images can be distributed via tarballs, Appx packages, or via the Windows Store. From what we know, distributing images from the Windows Store implies agreeing to the store policies & developer agreement, and may imply additional eventual concerns related to TOS/EULA. I unfortunately don't have much details on that front currently but I think that distribution from the Windows Store should be out of scope for now. Moreover, since version 2.4.4, WSL greatly improved the way to install tarballs outside from the store by adding "click-to-install" support for tarballs using the ".wsl" extension, as well as automatic first setup script support. As such, I would personally advice for that distribution method for the time being. Indeed, downloading such an Arch Linux ".wsl" tarball and (double) clicking on it would be all that's needed to be able to use Arch Linux with WSL. Note that WSL 2.4.4 and greater are still qualified as pre-releases at the time I'm writing those lines [3], but can still be installed with a single command line from a PowerShell prompt (`wsl --update --pre-release` from a system with WSL2 installed). If anything, installing such tarballs from WSL prior to 2.4.4 can still be done "manually" via a single command line (`wsl --import <DistroName> <InstallationPath> <TarballPath>`). With a proper documentation, using Arch Linux with WSL prior to 2.4.4 would still be pretty straightforward. # Technical details WSL2 provides a single virtual machine managed by the Windows host which runs guest Linux distributions as containers. As such, the Arch Linux base container image [4] can already be used for basic WSL support. To define some default parameters and provide additional functionalities, some specific WSL configuration files can be added to it. This, for instance, allows to add `systemd` support out of the box [5], define default parameters (e.g. default user, icon for the app shortcut or terminal profile) and automatic first setup script (which can be used to create a default non-root user and perform basic system setup interactively at first run for instance) [6]. The archive just needs to be renamed from ".tar.zst" to ".wsl" to allow "click-to-install" with WSL >= 2.4.4. For those interested, I actually "built" such a ".wsl" Arch Linux tarball [7] based on our latest base container image which can be installed & uses with WSL2 (made for test purposes). Make sure to read the README [8], which contains important information such as how the tarball was generated and how to use it. # Tarball maintenance / management Given that the WSL tarball would be based on our Docker / Container image, it could eventually be maintained in the same repo [4], although I'm not sure that mixing a WSL specific image with our "Docker" images is desirable. We also have the arch-boxes repo [9] which provides multiple kind of Arch images (vagrant, qcow2, cloud...). I think a WSL image could fit well there. Alternatively, a new dedicated repo could be created. When it comes to actual maintenance / management, I think the image generation and releasing should be fairly easy to automate via a scheduled GitLab CI (as it is currently done for our Docker images for instance). The process is fairly straightforward (grab latest base Docker image / tarball, un-archive it, add a few WSL specific files, re-archive it, rename it from ".tar.zst" to ".wsl"). I guess a monthly generation / release would be more than enough. We would still need a few people to watch over and feel responsible to maintain this. I'd happily be one of them, but please feel free to express interest :) # Unresolved questions / issues From a purely technical stand point, there is one pending issue which, fortunately, can be easily worked around. But the actual root cause and proper fix are unknown yet. See the last section of the README [8] for more details. On another level, I guess the important point here is to determine if we actually want this and, if so, how? For instance, which level of support do we want to provide (if we are to do this)? Since it would be pretty close in terms of "design" and usage, I personally think we could provide a similar level of support than the Docker images & Arch boxes images. Anyway, sorry for the long read 0:) Just to clarify, the actual purpose of this mail is to collect thoughts, concerns, questions, interests (both regarding using such an "official" Arch Linux WSL image and / or helping maintaining it), ... Please, share opinions if you have some :) [1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/about [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/FedoraWSL [3] https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/releases [4] https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/archlinux-docker [5] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/systemd-support-is-now-available… [6] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-uisns/windows/wsl/build-custom-distro#add-th… [7] https://pkgbuild.com/~antiz/WSL/ [8] https://pkgbuild.com/~antiz/WSL/README.md [9] https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/arch-boxes -- Regards, Robin Candau / Antiz

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RFC: providing an official WSL image
by Robin Candau 03 Mar '25

03 Mar '25

A new RFC (request for comment) has been opened here: https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/rfcs/-/merge_requests/50 Please visit the above link for discussion. Summary: Provide an official Arch Linux WSL image and define specifications for it (in terms of maintenance, distribution and support). -- Regards, Robin Candau / Antiz

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Cleaning up old [community*] repos
by Sven-Hendrik Haase 01 Mar '25

01 Mar '25

Hey, The git/community-to-extra migration was almost two years ago. Back then, we left the [community] repository and friends ([community-staging], [community-testing]) in place (though empty) so that users would have an easier time migrating. They've sat there unused for a long time now and I think users have had enough time to migrate. I would like to suggest removing the empty [community] repos from repos.archlinux.org. This could break update workflows for users who haven't updated their /etc/pacman.conf in a long time but apart from that I don't expect any drawbacks. Opinions? Sven

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Standardize on running autoreconf in prepare()
by Jelle van der Waa 27 Feb '25

27 Feb '25

Hi All, After all the recent RISC-V news I went ahead and checked out the existing effort to get Arch Linux supported on RISC-V. Felix maintains an overlay of PKGBUILDs which require customization to be be able to build on RISC-V. A lot of these PKGBUILD's patch autotools projects to run `autoreconf -fiv` in prepare(), this re-generates `configure` to understand RISC-V. Since these patches are simple enough and I don't see them harming Arch Linux, I would argue that we want these patches applied in our packages. Re-generating configure should not break, and if it does we should not accept the patch and get a bug filled upstream. Re-creating configure and thus not using the provided `configure` could arguably also be a good thing regarding supply chain security. And this also should help with other architecture ports. As a follow up we can discuss providing our own "/usr/share/config.site" and then ./configure --prefix=/usr would automatically configure localstatedir, libexecdir, etc. [1] https://github.com/felixonmars/archriscv-packages [2] https://github.com/felixonmars/archriscv-packages/blob/master/libafterimage…

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RFC: Shorten default TCP keepalive time
by Jan Alexander Steffens (heftig) 22 Feb '25

22 Feb '25

A new RFC (request for comment) has been opened here: https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/rfcs/-/merge_requests/51 Please visit the above link for discussion. Summary: Set our default `net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_time` to override the extremely conservative kernel default.

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Grub package removed from [testing], please stay on grub-2:2.12-3
by Tobias Powalowski 19 Feb '25

19 Feb '25

Hi, this afternoon we bumped the grub package to the latest available git snapshot, in order to solve the latest security issues encountered and revealed by the grub devs yesterday night. After some initial testing we decided to remove it again from the [testing] repository. We need now to figure out how we can solve the security issues without breaking user's systems, eg. loopback is broken or accessing encrypted devices. We will forward the detected issues to the grub devs. If you already updated the grub package, please downgrade it to grub-2:2.12-3, that is in [core] repository. Best regards tpowa -- Tobias Powalowski Arch Linux Developer (tpowa) https://www.archlinux.org tpowa(a)archlinux.org Archboot Developer https://archboot.com St. Martin-Apotheke Herzog-Georg-Str. 25 89415 Lauingen https://www.st-martin-apo.de info(a)st-martin-apo.de

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Rust packaging guidelines: Remove --all-features suggestion
by kpcyrd 19 Feb '25

19 Feb '25

hello, following up on an irc discussion on the Rust packaging guideline, I'd like to propose changing the command in section 5 from: cargo build --frozen --release --all-features to cargo build --frozen --release Enabling all non-default features is rarely what we want, they are usually off for a reason and instead features should be explicitly selected and enabled, or added to the default feature set by upstream if they are meant to be on by default. Setting --all-features in many projects (mine included) would enable the `vendored` feature that opts you out of system libraries, which is something we explicitly don't want. cheers, kpcyrd

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News draft: Cleaning up old repositories
by Sven-Hendrik Haase 17 Feb '25

17 Feb '25

Hey all, in an earlier thread [0], I proposed cleaning up the unused repos from repos.archlinux.org. They've become unused and stagnant after the git migration almost two years ago. We kept them around so it wouldn't break setups of users that tried to get the repository sync databases with an outdated pacman.conf. The old repos are safe to remove. Originally I had planned to just remove them and leave it at that. However, some people mentioned that it might still confuse users who haven't updated their pacman.conf in a long time. In order to inform those users there should be a news post. [0] https://lists.archlinux.org/archives/list/arch-dev-public@lists.archlinux.o… --- # Cleaning up old repositories Around two years ago, we've merged the [community] repository into [extra] as part of the git migration. In order to not break user setups, we kept these repositories around in an unused and empty state. We're going to clean up these old repositories on *2025-03-01*. On systems where `/etc/pacman.conf` still references the old `[community]` repository, `pacman -Sy` will return an error on trying to sync repository metadata. The following deprecated repositories will be removed: `[community], `[community-testing]`, `[testing]`, `[testing-debug]`, `[staging]`, `[staging-debug]`. Please make sure to remove all use of the aforementioned repositories from your `/etc/pacman.conf`! --- Cheers, Sven

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Fwd: Phasing out reiserfsprogs (EOL)
by Tobias Powalowski 06 Feb '25

06 Feb '25

Hi folks, as Giancarlo and Gromit mentioned, this is worth sharing on the public mailing list too. So here the mentioned mails from me for the public. Best regards tpowa -------- Weitergeleitete Nachricht -------- Betreff: Re: Phasing out reiserfsprogs (EOL) Datum: Thu, 6 Feb 2025 09:35:18 +0100 Von: Tobias Powalowski <tobias.powalowski(a)googlemail.com> An: staff(a)lists.archlinux.org Am 28.08.24 um 14:20 schrieb Tobias Powalowski: > Hi folks, > > reiserfs is a dead horse, I started to drop it from btrfs-progs > depends already. > > Any strong objection in removing it as depend from all packages? > > Thanks for your opinions. > > Best regards > > tpowa > Hi folks, 6.13 reached the repositories, all packages that depended on reiserfs were updated some time ago. The reiserfsprogs are now gone from the official repositories. Best regards tpowa

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News draft: glibc 2.41 breaks Discord
by Frederik Schwan 04 Feb '25

04 Feb '25

Hi everyone, as discussed in the Matrix packaging channel, the upcoming glibc move from testing to stable will break audio connectivity for Discord clients. Discord has fixed the issue in their canary build and has communicated an eta for the fix in stable for 2025-02-10. As the glibc update holds off package moves from testing to stable I would like to continue releasing the toolchain and give everyone instructions on how to fix their Discord installation. ------ # Glibc 2.41 corrupting Discord installation Glibc and it's friends will move from testing to stable on approx. 2025-02-03. After installing the update, the Discord client will show a read warning that the installation is corrupt. This issue has been fixed in the Discord canary build. Until the fix hits the stable Discord release, please use the canary build or login via browser if you rely on audio connectivity. There have been no reports that (written) chat connectivity is affected. ------ Best regards, Frederik

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