[arch-dev-public] Status Report 24-09-2007

[Aaron Griffin]

Hey all,
One of the things I plan on doing, for myself and for all of us, is
sending out a little "what's going on in devland" status report ever
Monday.

So here's the very first one! Please, if you can, split off any
discussion to other threads, and only use this one for missed
milestones that I may have forgotten.

So without further ado:

-----------------
ArchLinux Status Report, 24-09-2007

== Completed Tasks ==

* PHP Modularization
Pierre completed a rehash of our php package, making it smaller, more
agile, and modular.
The full details can be found in another thread on the private list.
Pierre, would you mind pushing the details somewhere so the public can see?

* Move to [core] Repo

I want to send a special "Thanks" out to everyone who participated in
this. It was a long time coming, and it definitely gives us more of an
idea of what's going on overall.
So thanks guys, you all deserve it!


* ISO Naming Scheme decision

We will be using YYYY.MM-REL for ISO versioning, where REL is the
release number of this ISO. For internal and testing ISOs, we will use
the point release scheme popularized by the x86_64 architecture. For
instance, 2007.12-1.5 is the 5th internal/testing release.

To prevent complication, we will start with release 0 for these
testing releases, so 0.1 should be the first internal release

* GNOME 2.20 in [testing]

If you are a GNOME user please take the time to test this, and let Jan
know if there are any issues - please put them in the bug tracker.

* X.org 7.3 in [testing]

This release will probably need a lot of testing, especially with
nvidia and fglrx drivers. Please test if you can.

== Pending Tasks, Short Term ==

* New Round of Package Cleanup

Eric will be leading the charge here. This will mostly be internal to
the developers as we will get rid of packages that are not compatible
between architectures and packages which no longer build or are just
broken.

* DVD and Additional Package ISOs

We need to decide on what exactly we're shipping on these "extra" iso
images. Thomas seems to have the idea mostly in hand, so I'd like him
to lead the discussion here (if that's ok with you)

* Unified chroot build tools

I am in the process of creating a script to aid us all in building
packages in a clean chroot. We should all be doing this whenever
possible.

I told you all I'd get this out by this weekend, but I failed. Sorry.
I will spend tonight getting this prepped.
Again, I apologize.

* Use vendor_perl for pacman perl packages

This is an easy bug to fix, it's just tedious.
http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/8082

If someone has the time, I'd like to see this accomplished sometime
this week. Any volunteers?

* Move all Arch related projects to gerolde

This is just a reminder - mainly to myself and Jason, and maybe Paul.
We'd like to get all Arch oriented projects in a common location so we
can all work on them and users can peek at things to see if they could
contribute at all.

http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/7789

* Next ISO Release Date

I'd like to remain in the loop here. Could anyone project the next
kernel release date and how long the ISO will take from the time of
release?
I'd like to start with (see above) a -0.1 release for internal and
testing stuff, and give that a few days, then release a -1 version.

* Upcoming Rebuilds

Andy mentioned some incoming rebuilds for some libs and things like
db. Is there any word on the schedule for these releases?
Andy, could you fill us in?

* DB Script Rewrite

Our DB scripts are kinda messy and are in a serious need of a rewrite.
Thomas and I have planned to sit down and fix these things, but if
anyone else is interested, I'd like to start planning a "sprint", if
you will, shortly.

* Orphan Packages

This is another one Andy brought up. We have A LOT of orphan packages.
We need someone to evaluate all of these orphans, to see if we should
1) still support them or move them "down" to community/unsupported
2) get someone to maintain them.

Seeing as Andy is concerned with this, could you take the reins here?
Collaborating with Eric on the package cleanup is probably a good
thing too.

== Pending Tasks, Long Term ==

* Pacman 3.1 Release

Dan and I are going to be working towards a 3.1 pacman release. Please
attach bugs you feel are critical to this here:

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

Dan and I will sort it out.

* Official pacbuild usage

This is Jason's boat. I'd like to get him some help here. The more
hands we can get in pacbuild, the faster we can start using it.

* 'Continuous Integration' setup / machine

This is a pipedream of mine. I'd like to setup a CI server somewhere.
For those unfamiliar with the term, what this means is that the server
will, periodically, check out our PKGBUILDs and try to build ever
single package. Clean chroots don't matter, what we're checking is
whether it will build as the instructions say.
I guess a pacbuild instance COULD be used here, but this should be a
simple bash script.
If anyone wants to do something fun, feel free to jump on this one,
but otherwise it's not important.

* Multiple Maintainers on the Dashboard

Yeah yeah this has been around for a while. We need to hack at our
django code, so we can have multiple maintainers per package.
Right now Eliott and Simo are the only ones with their hands in this
code. If anyone else has the desire to jump into this code, please
help out with this. It's something we are in dire need of.

* Multiple Architectures on the Dashboard

This is the same as above, BUT we need support for packages in all
architectures, AND the ability to assign different maintainers to each
architecture (not all of us can build for more than one arch).

* ArchCon 2009: Big Baaad Idea

So Tom K started this one, and, well, let's just throw it out there.
http://archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2007-September/001614.html

The tentative idea, which might be just a pipedream, is to get all the
devs and users, or as many as possible, together for a big-ol' meet
up.

Let's see how this pans out.
-----------

Well, there it goes. Monday status report for Arch devland.

I threw a few questions in there, feel free to use this thread for
that, but lets not pollute things with long-winded discussion - break
those off and help make our mail clients happy.

Thanks for all your hard work guys,
Aaron