FWN/Beats/Announcements

Announcements

Fedora Announcements are the place where you can find the major coverage from the Fedora Project including general announcements, development announcements and Fedora Events.

Contributing Writer: Rashadul Islam

Breaking News of the Week

[Guidelines Change] Changes to the Packaging Guidelines

Tom Callaway Tom Callaway tcallawa at redhat.com Thu Apr 12 20:57:29 UTC 2012 lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/announce/2012-April/003057.html

"A bundling exception for boost within Passenger was granted, due to the intrusive nature of the forked changes, the efforts of the maintainer to merge as many of them as possible into the upstream boost source tree, and the visible efforts of the upstream to keep the bundled copy of boost in sync with the current boost releases.

The package must also include a Requires: bundled(boost) = $VERSION where $VERSION is the boost version being bundled.

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:No_Bundled_Libraries#Packages_granted_exceptions

---

Packages which have SysV initscripts that contain 'non-standard service commands' (commands besides start, stop, reload, restart, or try-restart) must convert those commands into standalone helper scripts. Systemd does not support non-standard unit commands.

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Systemd#Unit_Files

---

A section was added to the systemd Packaging Guidelines page with a link to the Tmpfiles.d Packaging Guidelines page, since systemd uses Tmpfiles.d.

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Systemd#Tmpfiles.d

---

The Ruby Packaging Guidelines were almost completely rewritten. If you maintain ruby packages in Fedora, we advise that you review the new guidelines.

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Ruby

---

An informational note about Software Collection macros in Fedora Packages was added:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Guidelines#Software_Collection_Macros

---

The guidelines relating to PIE and Hardened Packages were updated. Now, if your package meets the following critera you MUST enable the PIE compiler flags:

• Your package is long running. This means it's likely to be started and

keep running until the machine is rebooted, not start on demand and quit on idle.

• Your package has suid binaries, or binaries with capabilities.

• Your package runs as root.

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Guidelines#PIE

---

Rules involving appropriate scripting within Fedora Package spec files were added to the Guidelines:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Guidelines#Scripting_inside_of_spec_files

---

The section in the systemd guidelines covering EnvironmentFiles and support for /etc/sysconfig files was revised for clarification.

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Systemd#EnvironmentFiles_and_support_for_.2Fetc.2Fsysconfig_files

---

The Ada Packaging Guidelines were updated for new rules on packaging source files and updated macros.

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Ada

---

The section of the Packaging Guidelines describing the "bootstrapping" binary exception was amended for clarification:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Guidelines#Exceptions

---

The section of the Packaging Guidelines describing Duplication of system libraries was amended to clarify the exceptions for Javascript and parallel stacks.

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Guidelines#Duplication_of_system_libraries

---

These guidelines (and changes) were approved by the Fedora Packaging Committee (FPC).

Many thanks to Kevin Fenzi, Bohuslav Kabrda, Brett Lentz, Marcela Mašláňová, Bill Nottingham, Vít Ondruch, Mamoru Tasaka, and all of the members of the FPC, for assisting in drafting, refining, and passing these guidelines.

As a reminder: The Fedora Packaging Guidelines are living documents! If you find something missing, incorrect, or in need of revision, you can suggest a draft change. The procedure for this is documented here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Committee#GuidelineChangeProcedure

Thanks, "

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Beta!

Dennis Gilmore Dennis Gilmore dennis at ausil.us Tue Apr 17 14:17:02 UTC 2012 http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/announce/2012-April/003058.html http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/announce/2012-April/003059.html

"Look, up in the sky! It's a bird, it's a plane, it's... the Beta release of Beefy Miracle! Flying 'round the world at the speed of the intertubes, delivering progress, mustard, and freedom to the masses.

We are delighted to announce the availability of the Beta release of Fedora 17. Want to get a taste of the future? Download it now:

http://fedoraproject.org/get-prerelease

What is the Beta Release?

The Beta release is the last important milestone of Fedora 17. Only critical bug fixes will be pushed as updates leading to the general release of Fedora 17 in May. We invite you to join us in making Fedora 17 a solid release by downloading, testing, and providing your valuable feedback.

Of course, this is a beta release, meaning that some problems may still be lurking. A list of the problems we already know about is found at the Common F17 bugs page, seen here:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F17_bugs

Features

This release of Fedora includes a variety of features both over and under the hood that show off the power and flexibility of the advancing state of free software. Here are just a few of the new features:

On the desktop: GNOME 3.4 introduces many user experience improvements, including new search capabilities in the activities overview, improved themes, and enhancements to the Documents and Contacts applications. A new application, GNOME-boxes, provides easy access to virtual machines. Additionally, GIMP 2.8, the newest version of the GNU Image Manipulation Program, brings new improvements such as single-window mode, layer groups, and on-canvas editing.

For developers: You never sausage a great array of development tools! Fedora 17 includes a pre-release of Juno, the release of the Eclipse SDK expected in June 2012. Java 7 (and OpenJDK 7) is the default Java runtime and Java build toolset, and GCC 4.7.x is now the primary compiler in Fedora. Other language refreshes include shipping Ruby 1.9.3, the latest stable version of the Ruby language, PHP 5.4, the latest PHP stack, and Erlang has also been updated to the R15 release.

Under the hood, and in the cloud: The Cluster stack in Fedora includes numerous and significant updates for both high availability and load-balancing applications. Fedora 17 utilizes Linux kernel 3.3, with improved btrfs and ext4 filesystems, GMA (poulsbo) graphics and Broadcom wireless chipset support, and numerous other bug fixes and enhancements. Firewalld is now the default firewall solution in Fedora, providing dynamic firewall configuration capabilities. Finally, OpenStack, a collection of services that can be used to set up and run cloud compute and storage infrastructure, has been updated to the latest release, 2012.1 (Essex).

And that's only the beginning. A more complete list and details of all the new features in Fedora 17 is available here:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/17/FeatureList

We have nightly composes of alternate spins available here:

http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/nightly-composes/

Contributing to Fedora

For more information on common and known bugs, tips on how to report bugs, and the official release schedule, please refer to the release notes:

http://docs.fedoraproject.org

There are many ways to contribute beyond bug reporting. You can help translate software and content, test and give feedback on software updates, write and edit documentation, help with all sorts of promotional activities, and package free software for use by millions of Fedora users worldwide. To get started, visit http://join.fedoraproject.org today!"

Fedora 18 Release name voting and Poll for whether to continue naming releases

Toshio Kuratomi Toshio Kuratomi a.badger at gmail.com Fri Apr 20 00:04:15 UTC 2012 http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/announce/2012-April/003060.html

"Voting for the Fedora 18 release names has begun. You can find the potential names in the voting application:

 https://admin.fedoraproject.org/voting/

If you are a Fedora contributor (defined as having signed the FPCA and being in one other Fedora group in the account system) then you are eligilbe to vote.

This cycle, the Board is also asking contributors to let us know if we should continue to have release names for future Fedora releases. Even though the interface is the same, this portion is intended to be a poll rather than a straight up vote. The Fedora Board will look at the answers to determine if enough contributors value continuing to create release names to make it worthwhile in the future. If it does seem desirable, the Board will likely look into forming a working group to come up with a new method for creating release names for future releases.

The poll for keeping release names is also found in the voting application:

 https://admin.fedoraproject.org/voting/

Eligibility to answer the poll is the same as for being able to vote on the names themselves (having signed the FPCA and being in one other group)."

Fedora Development News

The Development Announcement list is intended to be a LOW TRAFFIC announce-only list for Fedora development.

Acceptable Types of Announcements

• Policy or process changes that affect developers.
• Infrastructure changes that affect developers.
• Tools changes that affect developers.
• Schedule changes
• Freeze reminders

Unacceptable Types of Announcements

• Periodic automated reports (violates the INFREQUENT rule)
• Discussion
• Anything else not mentioned above

Fedora 17 Beta Go/No-Go Meeting, Wednesday, March 28, @17:00 Eastern

Fedora New Project Leader, Robyn Bergeron on Thu Mar 29 20:08:46 UTC 2012 announced,

"At the Go/No-Go meeting it was decided to slip the Beta by one week. Minutes follow below.

Despite valiant efforts by many awesome people, two new blockers appeared between RC1 and RC2, for which fixes are still incoming and will require the creation of an RC3.

As a result, ALL MAJOR MILESTONES, and their dependent tasks, will be pushed out by one week. Beta will now be looking at an expected release of 2012-04-10, and F17 GA is now scheduled for 2012-05-15.

The adjustments to the full F17 schedule will be done (very late) tonight, and published to the Schedule wiki page. Please note that the high-level milestones shown on the wiki page have already been updated to reflect the Beta slip.

Thanks for your patience. We will be meeting again next Wednesday for another Go/No-Go meeting."

Fedora Events

The purpose of event is to build a global Fedora events calendar, and to identify responsible Ambassadors for each event. The event page is laid out by quarter and by region. Please maintain the layout, as it is crucial for budget planning. Events can be added to this page whether or not they have an Ambassador owner. Events without an owner are not eligible for funding, but being listed allows any Ambassador to take ownership of the event and make it eligible for funding. In plain words, Fedora events are the exclusive and source of marketing, learning and meeting all the fellow community people around you. So, please mark your agenda with the following events to consider attending or volunteering near you!

Upcoming Events (December 2011 - May 2012)

• North America (NA)
• Central & South America (LATAM):
• Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA)
• India, Asia, Australia (India/APJ)

Past Events

Archive of Past Fedora Events

Additional information

• Reimbursements -- reimbursement guidelines.
• Budget -- budget for the current quarter (as distributed by FAMSCo).
• Sponsorship -- how decisions are made to subsidize travel by community members.
• Organization -- event organization, budget information, and regional responsibility.
• Event reports -- guidelines and suggestions.
• LinuxEvents -- a collection of calendars of Linux events.