gmane.linux.gentoo.project

ABI deps and DEPEND labelling

Steve Long — 2008-08-19T20:35:35

Posting to project as I think this stuff needs input from users as well as devs. (Many users have a lot of experience with embedded dev and ABI quirks.) Flameeyes posted here about ABI deps: http://blog.flameeyes.eu/articles/2008/08/18/same-abi-and-any-abi-dependencies ..which reminded me a lot of: http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=201499 Not really fussed about how it's resolved, so long as we get some sort of correct link dependency information (which compile-against is not.) OFC that probably means we'll never get correct LDEPENDs but such is life ;) What do others reckon about resolving ABI stuff, especially for cross-dev and multi-lib/testing?

SCALE 7x is Coming!

Gareth J. Greenaway — 2008-08-12T05:16:56

Like a fine wine, SCALE continues to improve with age. The 7th Annual So Cal Linux Expo will be February 20-22, 2009. For 2009, the Expo will return to the Westin LAX Hotel, site of the 6th Expo. Because interest in Open Source Software is steadily growing, attendance at SCALE continues to also grow. The depth and breadth of its audience is expanding, so the Expo will add additional speaker tracks to expand the educational opportunities for guests of all experience levels. The Call for Papers for the 7th Annual Expo opened August 4th 2008. The CFP solicits proposals from those who wish to speak at SCALE in February. In addition to three general tracks, a Developer's track and a Beginner's track have been added. So there are many more opportunities to speak at SCALE, and on a vastly wider breadth of topics than in the past. Pertinent dates for the CFP are: 4 August, 2008: CFP Opens 30 Nov, 2008: Deadline for abstracts/proposals submissions 20 Dec, 2008: Last date for notiﬁcation of acceptance 20 Feb, 2009: Conference starts If you're interested in presenting at SCALE, the full CFP can be found at http://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale7x/s7x_cfp. Please consider speaking - SCALE welcomes your proposal!

New developer : Thomas Anderson (gentoofan23)

Denis Dupeyron — 2008-08-07T21:43:32

(Yes, this is another of my now unfortunately famous late new-dev announcements. I finished setting up Thomas a couple hours before having to board a plane and have been hopping from one place to the other with unreliable internet since then. I'm going to snorkel like this for a few more weeks until I finally dive and resurface about 5400 nautic miles away. Please bear with me) It's my pleasure to introduce Thomas Anderson (gentoofan23) as an almost new Gentoo developer. As you may know, Thomas has already been messing up with our tree for a few weeks now. His turf is mostly amd64, sunrise and science. He his rather proficient in C, C++ and bash. You probably all know that I like thinking of my recruits as my kids. But Thomas is definitely young enough to be my son. And since he is such a nice kid I'm going to ask you guys to behave in his presence. By the way there must be something in his genes because one of his brothers is an Ubuntu developer. Thomas enjoys cooking as well as playing the bass and the piano. He recently picked up ping-pong but pretends he has yet to gain any real skill. His main hobby however is breaking packages and, fortunately for us, fixing them. Please everybody, give a warm welcome to gentoofan23. Denis.

New developer: Jesus Rivero (neurogeek)

Petteri Räty — 2008-07-29T19:21:15

Joining us from the jungles of Venezuela we have Jesus "neurogeek" Rivero. He has a degree in Behavioral Psychology so he will be joining the project to make sure people stay angry and flame as much as possible. If he has any leftover time he will be maintaining python related packages. Jesus is interested in Artificial Intelligence, Distributed and Parallel Computing. I guess his wife didn't marry him only because of good looks. Now let's try to prove to him that languages like ruby are much better than python. Regards, Petteri -- Gentoo/Recruiters project lead

BugDay - Saturday 2nd August

Roy Bamford — 2008-07-26T11:39:27

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Team, It's that time of the month again, time for another BugDay on Saturday 2nd Aungust. Join us in #gentoo-bugs on irc.freenode.net to help squash some bugs and meet up with fellow users and developers. Read all about it http://bugday.gentoo.org/ There are bugs suitable for all ages, abilities and interests. Just come along and chat to find out what goes on. - -- Regards, Roy Bamford (NeddySeagoon) a member of gentoo-ops forum-mods treecleaners trustees -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkiLDPYACgkQTE4/y7nJvasTowCgpv8t9HIlOMy2chUnAOzcGwHK JMEAoJGhGdrWp0dRB15VquXbCNkt6MIO =0PSj -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

New developer: Arun Raghavan (ford_prefect)

Petteri Räty — 2008-07-17T20:44:38

Joining as from Kanpur, India is Arun "Ford_Prefect" Raghavan. Arun is currently a developer for the Beagle desktop search project for which he was a student in the 2007 SOC and he has submitted small patches to various other projects. On the Gentoo side Arun will be joining us to help with maintaining GNOME so feel free to flame him on his bad choice of a WM. When not working with computers Arun gave me the usual hobbies for nerds like sci-fi and fantasy literature so remember to buy him a lot of beer if you ever see him in a conference. Tervetuloa, Petteri

BugDay - Its closer than you think

Roy Bamford — 2008-06-27T22:32:09

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Team, It's that time of the month again, time for another BugDay on Saturday 5th July. Join us in #gentoo-bugs on irc.freenode.net to help squash some bugs and meet up with fellow users and developers. Read all about it http://bugday.gentoo.org/ There are bugs suitable for all ages, abilities and interests. Just come along and chat to find out what goes on. Your distro needs you. - -- Regards, Roy Bamford (NeddySeagoon) a member of gentoo-ops forum-mods treecleaners trustees -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkhlam8ACgkQTE4/y7nJvau2GwCg5aanr//+hAK6FvvHwOXvnLLA q08Ani9aNfICpGnD3J8vZ3dcFp38BBQ3 =mV0d -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Shiny new stuff

Patrick Lauer — 2008-06-16T21:50:48

Hi All, I've been thinking about the perceived lack of progress in Gentoo a bit. And somehow it doesn't fit - there are so many nice things. What I did notice though is a lack of communication. Sometimes you mention "Hey, would be great if we had X" on IRC and three people point you at different implementations of the thing you've been searching for the last three months. Here's my challenge to you: Point out and describe the cool things that other people might not now. Small helper apps, overlays with crazy stuff, ricer patches and whatever else you can think of. I can think of a few well known ones: eix, the fast search tool for portage. Really shiny. OpenRC - Awesome init system. It's deviously fast and makes Fedora look like a relict of the 70s Layman - started as a small helper script, now gives access to around 3000 ebuilds (or even more, I haven't counted them in a while) Portage - with 2.2 on the horizon there are some neat features (like sets and obsoleting revdep-rebuild) I'd really appreciate a few pointers at your pet projects, shiny new things and even half-baked ideas that are far from being usable. Just show us what is out there waiting to be polished, packaged and used by legions of happy users! Thanks, Patrick

New developer : Friedrich Oslage (bluebird)

Denis Dupeyron — 2008-06-11T16:37:44

It's my pleasure to announce Friedrich Oslage (bluebird) is a new Gentoo developer. He will join the SPARC team for which he has been an Arch Tester for some time already. Friedrich is originally from Osnabrück, Germany, but he has been living in Munich for 3 years now. He creates web applications using Ruby on Rails for a living, but he also has experience administrating Oracle databases. He owns 6 computers, 3 of which are UltraSPARCs. When not working or playing with his SPARC toys, Friedrich likes playing poker with his friends, counting down the number of days left to Oktoberfest, and watching Stargate. He also loves pets but doesn't have any as he is afraid he would forget to feed them. Here's a trick then : whenever you have a hangover, feed your pets. Because you forgot to feed them the previous night. How difficult is this ? Please everybody, give a warm welcome to bluebird. Denis.

Fonts lead needed

Ryan Hill — 2008-06-06T23:42:03

I've removed myself from the fonts team. I just don't have time for Gentoo anymore. Thanks.

New developer: Matt Fleming (mjf)

Petteri Räty — 2008-06-02T20:40:12

Matt "mjf" Fleming is joining our Security team and hails from Bradford, West Yorkshire, UK. He does does a lot of low-level programing but also gets his hands dirty with languages like Java. He is already a developer of NetBSD so maybe he will eventually join to maintain the Gentoo/NetBSD port. That would probably mean a huge boost to the user base. Matt is an avid read and collector of vinyl records of any genre. I guess they still have their uses besides being Frisbees. Fire away, Petteri

New developer : Peter Alfredsen (loki_val)

Denis Dupeyron — 2008-06-01T09:00:25

It's my pleasure to introduce Peter Alfredsen (loki_val) as a new Gentoo developer. Peter has been suffering from acute uncontrolled patching and ebuild writing for some time. We made sure there was no treatment for this and then invited him to join us so that he can close himself the myriad bugs he has opened. He will be primarily working with the sound, fonts and gcc porting teams. Peter lives in Marstal on the beautiful island of Ærø, Denmark. He studied economics at the University of Southern Denmark, but decided at some point that earning money was more important. He claims his skills are limited to fixing C code, and also C++ when threatened with a pitchfork. He will refuse to do FORTRAN for aesthetic reasons (which means you know FORTRAN, sinner). Please give a warm welcome to loki_val. I believe he hasn't been kicked on irc yet. So next time you see him take a good aim, recoil and give him your best kick. Then tell him Calchan says hi. Denis.

BugDay - Its closer than you think- Saturday 7th June

Roy Bamford — 2008-05-28T17:29:27

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 It's that time of the month again, time for another BugDay on Saturday 7 June. Join us in #gentoo-bugs on irc.freenode.net to help squash some bugs and meet up with fellow users and developers. Read all about it http://bugday.gentoo.org/ There are bugs suitable for all ages, abilities and interests. Just come along and chat to find out what goes on. Your distro needs you. - -- Regards, Roy Bamford (NeddySeagoon) a member of gentoo-ops forum-mods treecleaners trustees -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkg9ln4ACgkQTE4/y7nJvauCtACfSxZypkiG/wwpe9vhZ3lzmC4A pf0AoKG/Q9xeHArt7SgQpS3C6GDMKPOj =IxO6 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

New developer: Andrey Kislyuk (weaver)

Denis Dupeyron — 2008-05-28T09:30:36

It's my pleasure to introduce Andrey Kislyuk (weaver) as a new Gentoo developer. He has a long experience working in the science overlay, and thus will join the Science project lead by his mentor, George Shapovalov. Andrey is originally from Sochi, Russia, but now lives in San Ramon, California, and considers it home. He is a graduate student in bioinformatics. In his spare time he enjoys running, biking, martial arts, computer games and spending time with his friends. At work Andrey uses a variety of bioinformatics software on various computers, including HPC clusters. He also has experience with perl, C, C++, Java and shell scripting. Andrey was already kicked^Wintroduced on irc some time ago. This delayed announcement is merely a byproduct of procrastination and too much time spent in airports. Blame me. Please everybody, give weaver a warm welcome. Denis.

New developer: Panagiotis Christopoulos (pchrist)

Denis Dupeyron — 2008-05-25T11:14:12

It's my pleasure to introduce Panagiotis Christopoulos (pchrist) as a new Gentoo developer. He will work on our Lisp and Scheme packages. Panagiotis lives in historical Athens, Greece, where he studies Computer Science at the Technological Educational Institute. His specific interests, are compiler internals and parallel computing. Apart from Lisp and Scheme, what he knows best is good old C. He also has some system administration experience as he built and now maintains three beowulf clusters, all of them running Gentoo. He owns a few x86_64 machines, two x86, one mips sgi o2 r5k box and a sparcstation 4. And guess what, those also run Gentoo. When not at a computer or spending time with his girlfriend, Panagiotis reads science fiction novels or watches movies and TV series. He seems to be a big fan of Dune and Battlestar Galactica. Please everybody, give a warm welcome to pchrist. Denis.

Gentoo SSL certificates switching to CACert

Robin H. Johnson — 2008-05-25T04:48:36

In the past, all of the SSL certificates for Gentoo services (forums.g.o, bugs.g.o, etc) were all self-signed. Now that the foundation is in good legal standing again, we are making headway with replacing the certificates with those from CACert, via their Organization assurance program. From the perspective of users, if their browsers trust the CACert Level 3 certificate or the Level 1, then the browser should trust the new Gentoo certificates. One of the new certificates is live on forums.gentoo.org as of today, but exposed the need for some further display improvements only (wrong email address) - it still functions perfectly. If your browser doesn't include the CACert roots, see either: http://wiki.cacert.org/wiki/BrowserClients https://www.cacert.org/index.php?id=3 Or make sure you have the latest ca-certificates package (if the browser uses it), and that update-ca-certificates was run properly.

Bugday to become a QA subproject

Mark Loeser — 2008-05-25T00:29:17

So, after discussion with welp, we have decided that making Bugday into a subproject of QA would make the most sense. I am trying to make the QA project into something that ensures that not only are we making the tree bug free, but also ensuring that users can help us in doing so as well. Bugdays present the best opportunity for us to get the user community involved in QA efforts. Also by having QA involved with Bugday, we can assist by doing trivial commits for maintainers that haven't gotten around to dealing with some more minor issues. I would also love to see more devs involved in Bugdays so they can be more productive for us and our users. If we can get enough involvement, maybe we can even make it happen more than once per month (I know I'm dreaming...). Thanks, -- Mark Loeser email - halcy0n AT gentoo DOT org email - mark AT halcy0n DOT com web - http://www.halcy0n.com

Want to learn.

Fahad Fateh — 2008-05-24T05:47:01

Hi! My name is Fahad Fateh and I am from Pakistan. I love Linux but I have very little knowledge about it. I want to learn more about Linux but I understand that learning takes time, so I want to help and learn while helping. I don't know any computer languages and my only experience with Linux is installing it and using it. But I do know Urdu(Pakistan's native language which is also understood and spoken in India) with English. Can I be of any help, any. I would be grateful if you guys could use me. Thanks. Fahad

New developer : Serkan Kaba (serkan)

Denis Dupeyron — 2008-05-22T08:14:46

It's my pleasure to introduce Serkan Kaba (serkan) as a new Gentoo developer. He will join the Java project where he will work on general Java applications. Serkan is from Istanbul, Turkey, where he lives with his family. He works at a bank as a software developer. In his free time he likes to watch movies, go out with friends and listen to music. And he's a big Fenerbahçe fan. In case you don't know, Fenerbahçe is that football team which beat the Girondins de Bordeaux in Champions League in 1986. Besides Java, Serkan knows C and some PHP and Python. His OSS feats include JKota (http://jkota.googlecode.com), GMSO (http://www.gnomefiles.org/app.php/GMSO), and porting Zemberek-server (http://zemberek.googlecode.com) to use dbus instead of it's own socket protocol. Please give a warm welcome to Serkan. Denis.

About herds and their non-existant use

Marius Mauch — 2008-05-21T21:42:19

As this topic jus came up in #-dev, and most people there seemed to agree with me I thought it might be worth to bring this topic up again. The topic is that I think that the whole 'herd' concept we're using is a huge mess and should be removed. Now before eveyone starts screaming, lets look at what this concept actually is, as many people are quite confused by it: 1) a herd is a group of packages (not a group of people) 2) the herds.xml file is used to assign people and mail aliases as maintainers of a given herd. Unfortuntely the syntax there give the impression that those people/mail aliases actually form the herd 3) the tag in metadata.xml is used to assign a package to a certain group. 4) the tag in metadata.xml can be used to assign individual maintainers for a package in addition to/instead of the herd maintainers 5) the combination of 2), 3) and 4) is used to determine the maintainers of a given package Now most people will be familiar with 5) to some degree, and that is actually the only valid use case for the herd concept that I'm aware of. Or has anyone some use case where you'd like to know what herd a package belongs to, but don't care about by whom that herd is maintained? If we can agree that this is the only real use case for the herd concept, then I think the concept is quite useless as it's just a redundant layer of indirection. You could just list mail aliases directly as maintainers, without having to consult herds.xml first. This would have a number of benefits: - you no longer have to look at herds.xml to determine the actual maintainers of a given package (as herd-name and associated mail alias don't always match) - it would simplify bug assignment rules, as the current case where a package has both a and a tag in metadata.xml no longer exists - eliminate confusion about what a herd actually is - only have one location where members of a given team are listed, currently it's possible and quite likely that herds.xml and the mail alias files get out of sync - as others said in #-dev: it makes sense ;) Now there of course are a few things to consider: - obviously, some tools, docs and processes would have to be updated, but that's always the case with changes - someone said that it might no longer be obvious if a package is maintained by an individual or a group of people. But is that really necessary? And it's not even obvious now, as some herds are maintained by a single person. - when I brought this up several months ago it was mentioned that sometimes people want to be on the mail alias of a herd, but don't want to be listed as members (and therefore be responsible). But that can likely be just implemented by some kind of blacklist in the relevant tools instead of using this whole indirection layer all the time. So, what do you think? Is there some benefit in keeping this concept, or can we live without it and make life simpler for everyone? Marius