[arch-releng] from now on: automatic testbuilds + heads-up on changes

[Dieter Plaetinck]

Hi,
I want to inform you of two things:

1) new testbuilds available!
A whole bunch of changes, both in the actual build environment, as well
as AIF itself, where the changes are mostly related to how we
automatically export configuration to the target system (locales,
networking, initcpio, etc).  for users, the main thing to remember is
that we now always export the network config to the target system,
whereas we used to ask for confirmation before. 
actually, so much has changed that despite my own tests it would
suprise me if i already found/fixed all the regressions.
for hackers: the aif code is now more readable :)

Please have a look at the changelog:
http://releng.archlinux.org/isos/Changelog


Known issues:
- when selecting source 'net', "install packages" won't realize the step
  has completed successfully. so you can do only do core installs, but
  the fix is already in git and will be on the next images.
- some kind of kernel/vbox bug wrt virtual memory:
http://mailman.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-general/2011-January/017713.html
- btrfs-progs, nilfs-utils and dosfstools packages cannot be installed
  to the target system (although you should be able to use those FS'es
  fine)

2) automatic builds: from now on, there will be automatic builds
available @ http://releng.archlinux.org/isos/
i'm still playing around with the parameters, probably the builds will
be daily or weekly.

I would appreciate it if people could test these images and post their
findings.

Checklist of things which need to be verified.
(when you test, you can obviously verify as many things as you want in
one run)
* dual arch image boot (pick your arch of preference at boot)
* i686 image boot
* x86_64 image boot
* pxe boot
* automatic install generic example
* automatic install fancy example
* net install manual spec (check that it works + rc.conf, resolv.conf,
  mirrorlist)
* net install dhcp (check that it works + rc.conf)
* core install
* autoprepare (check the installed system, incl fstab)
* manual partitioning/FS (with optionally: encryption, nilfs2,
  lvm,btrfs). (check also fstab, menu.lst, initcpio.conf and crypttab
  if appropriate)
* doing a rollback and re-doing autoprepare or manual config


TODO:
- some kind of web app /wiki page where users can mark things in the
  checklist as "working with testbuild $version" ?  that would give a
  good indication of when we can promote testbuilds to official releases

- some way to give these more visibility (post to al.org frontpage?
  can we mirror first?..?)

Dieter