news 28 Posted May 18, 2009 Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 176[1] for the week ending May 17th, 2009. In this week's content-rich issue, announcements brings us Fedora Activity Day (FAD) updates from Maylasia and the upcoming Berlin and Porto Alegre FUDCons, and several upcoming Fedora related eventsin Romania and Brazil. A sampling of the Fedora Planet reveals changes in IcedTea, Eclipse Linux Tools, detail on transitioning from rawhide to Fedora 11, amongst other jewels. In QA news, details from the recent iBus test days and many weekly meeting updates. In Developments, a broken dependency brouhaha flavored the fedora-devel list this week along with discussion of emacs add-ons for the Fedora Electronic Lab spin, and details on being excellent to one another on the list. In translation news, updates to Fedora 11 and news of inclusion of the specspo package in the upcoming release. The artwork team muses about wallpaper gallery developments and needs and final media art prep for F11. Nicu's Fedora webcomic postulates on the F11 pre-release queue, and we complete this week's melange with much news on the virtualization front from the lib-virt list. If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see our 'join' page[2]. We welcome reader feedback: fedora-news-list ( -at -) redhat.com FWN Editorial Team: Pascal Calarco, Oisin Feeley, Huzaifa Sidhpurwala 1. ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue176 2. ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join -- Announcements -- In this section, we cover announcements from the Fedora Project[1] [2] [3]. Contributing Writer: Max Spevack 1. ↑ http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/ 2. ↑ http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/ 3. ↑ https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Events --- Fedora 11 (Leonidas) --- Oddly enough, there weren't any Fedora 11 announcements this week. The schedule[1] continues to list Tuesday, May 26 as the release date. 1. ↑ https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/11/Schedule --- Fedora 12 (Rawhide) --- The KDE Special Interest Group[1] has begun the process of bringing KDE 4.3-beta1 into Fedora 12's Rawhide[2]. 1. ↑ https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/KDE 2. ↑ http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2009-May/msg00008.html --- Bugzilla --- Some housekeeping in Bugzilla will take place[1] following the Fedora 11 release. All Rawhide bugs will automatically be changed to Fedora 11 -- because the Rawhide under which those bugs will followed will have also changed into Fedora 11. Secondly, all Fedora 9 bugs will automatically receive a notice stating that there is only one month of support remaining for that release. 1. ↑ http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2009-May/msg00007.html --- FUDCons and FADs --- This section previews upcoming Fedora Users & Developers Conferences, as well as upcoming Fedora Activity Days. -- Fedora Activity Day Malaysia Planning is underway for a Fedora Activity Day[1] in Malaysia at the end of May, contingent upon gathering together sufficient Fedora contributors to make such an event worthwhile. If you are in the area and are interested in attending or have some ideas on projects that could be worked on, see the wiki page[2] for more information. 1. ↑ https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FAD 2. ↑ https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FAD_Malaysia_May_2009 --- FUDCon Porto Alegre 2009 --- FUDCon Porto Alegre[1] will take place June 24-27 in Brazil. About 30 people have signed up so far, and we're hopeful for an attendance of over 100. If you would like more information, and to sign up, please visit the wiki page. 1. ↑ https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon:LATAM_2009 --- FUDCon Berlin 2009 --- FUDCon Berlin[1] will be held from June 26-28, and we're getting close to crossing the 100-person-preregistered mark. Don't forget to pre-register[2] for the event, and also to sign up for lodging[3] if you need it. 1. ↑ https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon:Berlin_2009 2. ↑ https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon:Berlin_2009_attendees 3. ↑ https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon:Berlin_2009_lodging --- Upcoming Events --- Consider attending or volunteering at an event near you! May 22-23: eLiberatica[1] in Bucharest, Romania. May 29-30: III ENSL e IV FSLBA[2] in Salvador, Brazil. 1. ↑ http://www.eliberatica.ro/2009/ 2. ↑ https://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Festival4 -- Planet Fedora -- In this section, we cover the highlights of Planet Fedora[1] - an aggregation of blogs from Fedora contributors worldwide. Contributing Writer: Adam Batkin 1. ↑ http://planet.fedoraproject.org --- General --- Deepak Bhole joined the blogging world (welcome!) by explaining[1] changes that the IcedTea Java web browser Plugin will be undergoing in order to continue functioning after some ancient APIs (LiveConnect and OJI) are removed from Gecko (Mozilla-based projects) in the coming months. Eclipse Linux Tools has released version 0.2 of their Eclipse plugin, and Andrew Overholt described[2] some of the new features along with the requisite eye candy. Dracut is a new tool, designed to generate an initramfs and replace all of the different methods currently employed by various distros. Harald Hoyer appealed[3] for anyone interested in helping contribute, noting that it is one of the Features slated for Fedora 12. Paul W. Frields linked[4] to a fedora-devel post by Jesse Keating explaining how to configure a system to ensure that a Fedora 11 pre-release properly transitions onto the stable Fedora 11 repositories once it has been released (or how to stay on rawhide if that is your plan). Jesse Keating was interviewed[5] for a podcast, about the upcoming Fedora 11 release. Jesse also announced[6] some discussions that the Fedora Advisory Board has had about the hostility that sometimes surfaces on the fedora-devel list and ways that it might be dealt with. "This is the "warning shot". Our hopes is that folks will start to figure out what is and is not allowed to happen on the list and things will tone down a bit". Adam Williamson noted[7] a number of reasons that there can never be a common Linux Package format, but suggested that "what others want is something that would actually be achievable, which is a unified system to make it easier for third parties to independently provide self-contained software packages for various distributions...If you want to do it really snazzily, though, what you want to do is design the App Store for Linux, or Steam for Linux, or something like that." Jesse Keating responded[8] that a potential complication might be "that user buy in is going to be hard when you take a software platform (such as RHEL or Fedora) that uses one tool to manage updates for the entirety of your software set (yum, PackageKit, whatever frontend) and suddenly add one or more tools to specifically manage one or two software bundles". 1. ↑ http://dbhole.wordpress.com/2009/05/11/the-future-of-icedtea-plugin/ 2. ↑ http://overholt.ca/wp/?p=130 3. ↑ http://www.harald-hoyer.de/personal/blog/dracut 4. ↑ http://marilyn.frields.org:8080/~paul/wordpress/?p=1631 5. ↑ http://jkeating.livejournal.com/69319.html 6. ↑ http://jkeating.livejournal.com/69477.html 7. ↑ http://www.happyassassin.net/2009/05/15/packaging-standards-again/ 8. ↑ http://jkeating.livejournal.com/69726.html --- Events --- Event reports and photos of FOSSComm in Greece by Dimitris Glezos[1] and Pierros Papadeas[2]. Anirudh Singh Shekhawat posted[3] photos[4] and descriptions of the setup for FOSJAM in India (which included the setup of Fedora 10 on 80 machines!). MáirÃn Duffy attended an ACM SIGCHI panel on "User Experience in Open Source" and posted[5] detailed notes on the topic. 1. ↑ http://dimitris.glezos.com/weblog/2009/05/12/fosscomm-recap-2 2. ↑ http://pierros.papadeas.gr/?p=24 3. ↑ http://acedip.blogspot.com/2009/05/countdown-to-fosjam-day-0.html 4. ↑ http://acedip.blogspot.com/2009/05/preparing-for-fosjam.html 5. ↑ http://mairin.wordpress.com/2009/05/14/notes-on-the-user-experience-in-open-source-panel-at-sigchi-boston-april-2009/ -- QualityAssurance -- In this section, we cover the activities of the QA team[1]. Contributing Writer: Adam Williamson 1. ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA --- Test Days --- This week's Test Day[1] was on iBus[2], the new default input method framework for Asian languages in Fedora 11. Over 15 people came out to test and report their results, and overall the new system seemed to be working solidly, but testing revealed several issues for the developers to work on. Thanks to all who came out for the Test Day. Currently, no Test Day is scheduled for next week - it is too close to the scheduled release of Fedora 11 for any testing to produce results directly in Fedora 11 final release, but if you would like to propose a test day which could result in changes for post-release updates, or an early test day for Fedora 12, please contact the QA team via email or IRC. 1. ↑ https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2009-05-14_iBus 2. ↑ https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/IBus --- Weekly Meetings --- The QA group weekly meeting[1] was held on 2009-05-13. The full log is available[2]. Will Woods reported that he had been doing a lot of upgrade tests, but had not had time to write them up formally as test cases as was planned at the previous meeting. Adam Williamson reported that he had completed the revision of the Fedora bug workflow page[3] to include the alternative processes agreed for closing bugs in Rawhide at the previous meeting, and had made further changes. He directed the group to his announcement email[4] for further details. Will Woods reported there had been little work on the autoqa project during the week, as testing for Fedora 11 release had taken priority. The group discussed how to get feedback on the conduct of Test Days themselves, rather than on the software being tested. Adam Williamson suggested adding a 'suggestion box' to the normal layout for Test Day wiki pages. Jóhann Guðmundsson suggested an email to the Share this post Link to post