[arch-dev-public] Status Report 2007-10-15

[Aaron Griffin]

ArchLinux Status Report, 2007-10-15

Yeah, OK. This one is a little lacking. I was gone most of the week
(Wed - Sun) so much of this is hearsay. Sorry for the long delay in
getting this out, I had a lot of information to parse.

Let me know if I report anything falsely, or I forgot a major milestone.

== Newsworthy Items ==

* Losing some kernels

It looks like, due to external issues, and maintainer workloads, we're
going to be losing two of our additional kernels - ck and suspend2.
This leaves us with one official kernel in the repos.

Ref:
http://archlinux.org/news/354/
http://archlinux.org/news/355/

== Completed Tasks ==

* Successful testing policy implementation

Looks like all the core updates have been using the sign-off policy,
which is great. For filtering purposes, try to use the [signoff] tag.

Thanks to everyone doing this. It also helps the rest of use know
what's going on in [core].

* texinfo moved to core/devel

While this is minor in the grand scheme of things, it's worth a mention here.

* unionfs patch updated

Our unionfs patch in our stock kernel was a bit outdated and has been
updated to the newer branch, which should fix any issues that may have
cropped up.

* The "Big Move" from testing

This weekend db, heimdal, gtk, gnome, gcc and probably others were
moved from testing to core/extra. Special thanks to Andy, Jan, and
everyone else involved in making this happen.

== Pending Tasks, Short Term ==

* New logo

The concept of creating a new logo for Arch has been brought up often enough.

I'd like to see this happen. New repo, new leader, new... well, lots
of stuff. It's only fitting that we modify the logo slightly.

This ML thread has a few references:
http://archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2007-October/002158.html

The plan, it seems, is to open things up for submissions, then have
the developers and TUs vote on the best logo.

Before this week is up, I'd like to decide on a submission range and
how we want to handle voting.

* The dividing line: extra and community

Now that we cleaned up the blurry line between current and extra with
the core repo, we come across another case of this.

Ref:
http://archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2007-October/002188.html

The line between extra and community is not all that clear, so we need
to flesh it out. Is it defined by developer time? Is it defined by
necessity? Popularity?

How should we best clarify this?

* Package and Orphan Cleanup

Eric did some amazing work here fleshing out our lists in the dev wiki for this.

https://www.archlinux.org/wiki/Repo%20Cleanup/

I would like to set aside some time this week to actually clean these
up, but we don't need anything fully organized - if anyone has the
time, perhaps we could do this Thursday night (my time, heh)?

* DVD and Additional Package ISO Lists

I generated a stub page last report, but had no time to fill in data.

https://www.archlinux.org/wiki/ISO-Packages/

Please use this to _explicitly_ list things you want or don't want on
these additional ISOs.

When I get the time, I will fill in based on my thoughts.

* Unified chroot build tools

These are still sitting in my personal branch. I was on vacation last
week, so nothing got done.

http://code.phraktured.net/?p=devtools.git;a=summary

* Perl policy

I'd like to move to official implementation of this policy listed here:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Perl_Policy

This week I am going to coordinate with François (Firmicus) and anyone
else interested in our perl packages and clean up what we have.

See the following bug reports:
http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/8082
http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/8236
http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/7530
http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/7587


== Pending Tasks, Long Term ==

* Pacman 3.1 Release

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

Again, I was away most of last week, so little got completed. I want
to meet up with Dan again this week so we can crack out some of these
bugs.

* DB Script Rewrite

This one went by the wayside. It appears we're sitting in one of those
"not broke" modes.

I'd still love to actually do this, but I'm moving it to the "long
term" items, as it's not all that critical, and there are better
things to do.

* Official pacbuild usage

Still looking at this report from Jason.
http://archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2007-October/001944.html

We have an official git repo for pacbuild sitting here:
http://projects.archlinux.org/git/?p=pacbuild.git;a=summary

This is pretty important. I'd like to move us away from this
separation by architecture that we have right now - it shouldn't
matter which architecture a given developer runs when it comes to
building packages.


* 'Continuous Integration' setup / machine

The state hasn't changed much since last time, however, Dan pointed
out that git actually includes hooks for a CI setup, which is a decent
point in git's favor.

* Modernize our Dashboard

I should be able to pump out some documentation on how to setup a
local instance of our site soon.

I'd like to coordinate with Eliott and Simo about getting a public
(sanitized) git repo up on the projects site so we can begin
developing more readily.

* Architecture Independent Repos

Added to flyspray:
http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/8153

It appears that we can implement noarch packages with very little
changes. This combines, in a way with the Pacman 3.1 release, and db
script rewrites above.

* ArchCon 2009: Big Baaad Idea

Last time I brought up the idea of a donation drive with regards to
sending the developers to a given venue. No one responded to it, so
I'm not sure if it was good or bad.

I wonder... were I not in the position I'm in, would I donate? What
about you guys?

http://archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2007-September/001614.html