[arch-general] Finishing off the package signing issue -- call for contributors

[Kerrick Staley]

Hello,
I'm new to this mailing list, but my name's Kerrick Staley. I'm fairly new
to the Arch community: I've used Arch for 2.5 years now.

I would like to spearhead an effort to finish the implementation of signed
packages in Arch that Allan has gone to the effort to start. I've only been
working on the issue for about 4 days now and don't have much to show yet,
but I'm sending this message out to stop the bickering as well as to query
for interested developers who would be willing to help me (no background
knowledge required, just strong coding skills, patience, and dedication).
Please reply to this message if you are interested. It seems there are a lot
of users who would like this feature and can contribute, but are prevented
by a lack of documentation and technical knowledge, so I will create plenty
of documentation regarding the issue and what needs doing.

I should warn that I'm a rather inexperienced programmer in the broad scale
of things and am unfamiliar with pacman's source code, so I ask that
developers on the pacman-dev mailing list have extra patience when I ask
questions. I'm sure that even just the cessation of angry signing-related
inquiries to this list will be reward enough for your help as I implement
this feature.

I would like this feature to be in active use in 3 months, 2 if possible.
Since a working system will require cooperation and understanding from all
developers, the human aspects of this project may prove more difficult than
the actual coding, therefore ***I ask that all Developers and Trusted Users
stay tuned to this list and read future information I will give regarding
system configuration and key management.***

I might be busy this weekend, but I should have some things started within a
couple of days.


Thanks,
Kerrick Staley