Here’s with some delay the next incarnation of Factory Progress. I’ve noticed the following changes that might interest people using and developing openSUSE Factory:
Package changes
Linux 3.0
Linux kernel 3.0 rc5 is currently on its way to factory and the header files (in package linux-glibc-devel) have already been updated for it. If your software reads the Linux kernel version, please check that it can cope with the two digits instead of the three of the new version. Best would be to not read the version at all.
Systemd
Frederic has proposed a “Road to systemd for openSUSE 12.1″. Systemd is a replacement of the SysVinit scripts that we have been using and improving in the past with many new – including some controversial – ideas. Check his blog post for additional references about systemd. The majority of the distributions are moving to systemd as well and standarizing on it, will allow to share some more code and development in this area.
We’re now in phase 1 – which means: Get systemd running as an option. Once this is working satisfactory, we can switch the default (phase 2) and decide what to do with SysVinit support.
No static glibc libraries
The C library glibc now does not come anymore with static libraries, those are in the new glibc-devel-static subpackage.
Python 3.2
The python3 package is now at version 3.2, the most important change in Python 3.2 is the implementation of “PEP 384, a stable ABI for extension modules” which means that with 3.2 and upwards there won’t be any API breakages for modules which is really important developer wise.
Another big improvement is the new GIL (Global Interpreter Lock) implementation which will speed up threaded Python code. Python 3.2 also introduces “futures” library which is used for concurrent programming, this will be useful more multi-core Python development.
Tomoyo
Tomoyo is a MAC (Mandatory Access Control) implementation for Linux – so an alternative to AppArmor and SELinux. openSUSE’s Linux kernel does now come with the module and also the tools were updated to support this.
Policy and tool changes
New Source Service mode activated and recompression of tar balls
The new source service mode has been activated, it is recommended to update to osc 0.132 version as available in the openSUSE:Tools project to work with source services. Now the download URL given in source link is checked, so it has to be accurate. If you downloaded and recompressed a tarball, read Coolo’s policy change: “please don’t recompress tarballs unless it saves >1MB for download.”.
He also mentions:
What will become policy sooner or later is that you should not have incorrect source URLs behind Source*, so _if_ you have to recompress, don’t lie in the
Source line, but put the original tar as comment and use local file names in Source:
Dropping a package from Factory
Vincent explained How/why/when to drop a package from Factory.
Release notes in FATE
To make it easier to write release notes, it helps a lot, if you (= the so-called stakeholders) would provide a release notes snippet in the future using openFATE. We can then collect all those release notes and edit them.
Other interesting bits
openSUSE Conference
The call for papers is continuing to run, please submit session proposals at the conference site. If you like to learn what a BoF is, read this article.
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Glad to see the updates. Are there rpm macros for python 3.2 now?
Yes, there are rpm macros for python 3.2 – please ask on opensuse-packaging for details.