Hi all, here is a quick progress report on Valve sponsored work in May 2025. ## Weeklies - [2025-05-13] - [2025-05-20] - [2025-05-27] ## Signstar This month we have been focusing on getting the RFC for automated signing of OS artifacts ready (we apologize in advance - it is not going to be a short one). We estimate to publish it this month (June). In the Signstar project we have improved the way we run integration tests, by implementing a custom target runner, that allows us to seamlessly run some tests in containerized environments (see [signstar!237]). We've updated our cryptography libraries (rpgp 0.16 includes support for Post Quantum Cryptography) and started work on gathering code coverage for tests. Further work has gone into adding a module for NetHSM syncing and state handling to the signstar-config crate (see [signstar!165]/[signstar!249]). ### Hours billed for Signstar April: David (35h), Wiktor (91h) ## Buildbtw We're focused on getting builds running in VMs inside gitlab pipelines. Besides that, we want to release parts of the PoC that can already be useful to other Arch Linux projects. - We've implemented background running of virtual machines in vmexec to support our custom gitlab runner executor which runs in multiple discrete steps, requiring virtual machines to stay running between each of them ([vmexec-background]). - We've improved vmexec's robustness, and fixed more bugs ([vmexec-pty], [vmexec-exit-codes], [vmexec-stderr]). - We've decided to license the buildbtw source code under GPL. - We're planning to release a standalone tool for keeping a local copy of all of Arch Linux' package source repositories and automatically fetching any changes. This can be used by projects such as bumpbuddy or ALPM. - We've started polishing up the CLI, web UI and documentation in preparation for a first PoC user test. We'd like to invite everyone who's interested to participate in our weekly coordination meetings. Tuesdays at 17:00 UTC (19:00 CEST), we meet on the Arch Linux Mumble server to discuss the current state of the project, groom gitlab issues, discuss technical questions and plan the week ahead. You're welcome to join and listen, or to contribute your expertise. If you'd like to participate through other means, we've also made an effort to clean up our issue tracker. Please browse the issues and pitch in if something feels unclear, or information is missing. You can follow along our day-to-day progress on the proof-of-concept milestone ([poc-milestone]) and the standalone tool milestone ([tool-milestone]). ### Hours billed for buildbtw and package source licensing May: Rafael (53h), Sven (81h), Levente (0h) ## Package Source Licensing - After some last fine-tuning, Morten has merged the RFC40 amendment (thanks!) ([rfc40]) - We've prepared a draft mail with packager guidelines for arch-dev-public ([licensing-adp-mail]) - We've created a plan for licensing new contributions since our last batch of licensing notification mails. Once RFC52 is merged and we've added REUSE.toml files to all repositories where all contributors have been notified, we'll send out a second batch of licensing notifications for new contributors. After a second 4 month waiting period, we'll add REUSE.toml files to the rest of the repositories. [2025-05-13]: https://md.archlinux.org/wmTzaT1IQlGp3S3WuDJgiA# [2025-05-20]: https://md.archlinux.org/s2yfyaFJTVavU1nMI2h6XQ# [2025-05-27]: https://md.archlinux.org/JDxTHJ4-Sw60bnDNPTWZXg# [vmexec-background]: https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/vmexec/-/merge_requests/5 [poc-milestone]: https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/buildbtw/-/milestones/11#tab-issues [signstar!165]: https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/signstar/-/merge_requests/165 [signstar!237]: https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/signstar/-/merge_requests/237 [signstar!249]: https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/signstar/-/merge_requests/249 [tool-milestone]: https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/buildbtw/-/milestones/17#tab-issues [vmexec-pty]: https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/vmexec/-/merge_requests/1 [vmexec-exit-codes]: https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/vmexec/-/merge_requests/7 [vmexec-stderr]: https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/vmexec/-/merge_requests/6 [rfc40]: https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/rfcs/-/merge_requests/49 [licensing-adp-mail]: https://md.archlinux.org/PYvbvENaTni5Skf67V1Jgg#