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Fedora Extras available for download
So you're wondering what's up with Fedora Extras these days. We have an announcement to make. <Sopwith> So what should I put in the announcement? <|Jef|> Sopwith: that we are all deeply deeply ashamed for the delay and we throw ourselves on the mercy of the community and ask for forgiveness Thanks to the efforts of all the Extras contributors, you can now get Fedora Extras packages from the main Fedora download site at http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/extras/ Fedora Extras are sets of packages that augment Fedora Core but do not replace Fedora Core component packages. These packages, like all packages that are part of The Fedora Project, must conform to the legal requirements of the project and conform to the Fedora Extras policies. Examples of packages currently available in Fedora Extras include: bittorrent cfengine gqview jikes libsigc++ openslp rxvt sqlite starfighter zope with a total of over 500 packages available! The fedora-extras-list (https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-extras-list/) is the best place to discuss Extras. If you'd like to start becoming involved with Extras development, a good step beyond joining fedora-extras-list might be http://cvs.fedora.redhat.com/extras.shtml <mschwendt> Sopwith: bug reports via bugzilla.redhat.com, not bugzilla.fedora.us Please remember to report bugs at http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/ Use a Product of "Fedora Extras". Seth Vidal deserves special recognition for continuing to be the engine behind getting builds done and organized through the fedoraproject.org site. And thanks to you all for being part of Fedora! -- Elliot -- fedora-announce-list mailing list fedora-announce-list@redhat.com http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-announce-list (Log in to post comments)
To use via YUM: Posted Feb 2, 2005 21:57 UTC (Wed) by b7j0c (subscriber, #27559) [Link] From the server notes:
To use this repository in yum add a file in your /etc/yum.repos.d dir with
[extras]
[extras-debug]
You will also want to make sure you've imported this:
key into your rpm database. Use this command:
rpm --import http://fedoraproject.org/extras/RPM-GPG-KEY-Fedora-Extras
To use via YUM: Posted Feb 3, 2005 2:45 UTC (Thu) by utidjian (guest, #444) [Link] Many thanks for posting that info b7j0c. Makes life just a bit easier.
-DU-...etc...
To use via YUM: Posted Feb 3, 2005 5:27 UTC (Thu) by skvidal (subscriber, #3094) [Link] That came from:
http://fedoraproject.org/extras/EXTRAS
Other good pages for fedora extras information:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras_2fFC3Status
http://fedoraproject.org/infofeed/
and
http://tinyurl.com/5ynvp <-- all fedora extras bugs in red hat's bugzilla.
-sv
What's the recommended relationship to previous repositories? Posted Feb 3, 2005 1:07 UTC (Thu) by adastra (guest, #126) [Link] I've been drawing some stuff in from freshprms, dag, and atrpms. It looks in a few places like Fedora Extras is a merge of (some of?) fedora.us and freshrpms. OTOH, freshrpms, dag, atrpms and others were supposed to form RpmForge according to Dag's webpage: "However, together with FreshRPMS, PlanetCCRMA and Dries, we're working towards a merge under the RPMforge umbrella." I see several of the independent packagers talking on the fedora-devel and fedora-extras webpages. The independent repository pages and Fedora project pages and wikis all seem to be out of date.My unanswered questions: (1) Who is contributing packages to Fedora Extras? (2) If any formerly independent repository is contributing, should I replace its entry in my apt sources.list with Fedora Extras? (3) Which repositories is Fedora Extras compatible with? (4) Is RpmForge alive? Their webpage is blank. (5) Is Fedora finally ready for the community, and if so, will the community still work with them?
Thanks in advance for any insight.
What's the recommended relationship to previous repositories? Posted Feb 3, 2005 5:22 UTC (Thu) by skvidal (subscriber, #3094) [Link] 1. Contributors to Fedora Extras include:Michael Scwendt Matthias Saou Thomas Vander Stichele Warren Togami Thorsten Leemhuis Ville Skyttä Enrico Scholz Jeremy Katz Seth Vidal Phillip Compton 2. You can do whatever you want in your repository lists. Take a look at what is there and see where to go from there.
3. We're not targeting compatibility with anyone/anything other than fedora core. That said, we're also not trying to be incompatible with anyone.
4. Dunno what rpmforge is doing but last I checked there were packages out there claiming to be from rpmforge so I'd suspect they are.
5. I'm 'from the community' and I'm currently doing all the builds for fedora extras. In addition, the fedora extras rss feeds are generated by me and the wiki with all the status info is run by the community.
-sv
Interesting, but maybe too late Posted Feb 3, 2005 4:39 UTC (Thu) by jd (guest, #26381) [Link] Freshrpms, Dag, and a few others have got together to form something called RPMForge, which appears to be a collection of RPM collections which are known to be interoperable and reasonably open to additions.As far as I can tell, Fedora Extras does a similar job, but apparently there has been some "political" debate in the past over "mixing repositories", with Fedora Extra folks apparently trying to push people into using their own repository by means of FUD. The technical side doesn't change, even if the political front looks a little dubious, but I'd strongly recommend applying the necessary patches to attitudes before Holy War breaks out. The last thing F/OSS needs is for closed-source vendors to use images of repository archivists punching each other out at a convention... However, there is one technical side that does need to be addressed. ALL Fedora (and related) repositories use the 80386 and AMD's 64-bit architecture as the sole two systems supported. Even Mandrake doesn't go beyond the 586. Errr, now I can understand people wanting generic distros. That's good. That's sensible. But about the only ones using 386s, 486s and Pentium Is these days are people needing systems for use in space or medical facilities. In either case, they are probably not going to use a heavyweight server/desktop environment. The people wanting something like Fedora are going to be using Pentium IIs at least, most likely Pentium III or IV. Those with a laptop are probably using something from the Pentium M family. Either that, or they're using Athlons. However, if you want something tuned for ANY of those systems, you've got to compile the entire distribution yourself. That is, frankly, stupid. Not one of these processors is supported as standard, even though ALL of them have a far wider userbase than the 80386. 64-bit AMD is OK. It's a start. But where's the Itanium? With Microsoft out of the picture, a Linux distro tuned to Intel's pure 64-bit offering would seem to be guaranteed an open-house on the market. As for packages... There are probably many more high quality programs listed on Freshmeat in a month than there are in the whole of Fedora Core and Fedora Extra combined. Instead of working to do exactly the same as the RPMForge group, I'd argue that everybody would be better served if Fedora Extras joined forces with the other vendors, dropped the dupes and served packages of all the exciting new software NOBODY ELSE COVERS. This would massively increase the level of interest in Fedora, as well as increase the exposure of the software on offer, thus benefiting everybody. Doesn't it make more sense to cooperate, rather than compete unnecessarily? Last, but by no means least, Freshrpms had a bright idea, putting the Yum information in an RPM file. I've dummied up similar RPMs for the other repositories I use, so that I can more easily track what I'm tracking. Fedora Extras would benefit, I think, from doing the same.
The reasons Mandrake stopped at i586... Posted Feb 3, 2005 5:23 UTC (Thu) by leonbrooks (guest, #1494) [Link] ...include:
Fedora compile flags Posted Feb 3, 2005 10:37 UTC (Thu) by james (subscriber, #1325) [Link] The Fedora developers keep being asked this, and their answer is the same (although I've yet to check the compile flags on the Extras packages).
Fedora packages are compiled optimising for i686 (earlier releases) or the Pentium 4 (today). But they normally use the i386 instruction set.
For most packages, there is no performance benefit to using the later instructions. And modern processors other than the Pentium 4 seem to benefit as much from Pentium 4 optimisations (Athlons, in particular, do so much reordering that they can optimise for themselves).
If you can identify a package that is compiled with 386 instructions but would benefit from more recent instructions, and if you can provide benchmarks ("Distribution X is faster" doesn't count since there are too many variables), then fedora-devel@redhat.com would love to hear from you.
Incidentally, AMD K6-based computers count as i586 as far as gcc is concerned.
James.
"political" debate in the past over "mixing repositories"? Posted Feb 9, 2005 11:53 UTC (Wed) by Kurrelgyre (guest, #5600) [Link] "Fedora Extras are sets of packages that augment Fedora Core but do not replace Fedora Core component packages." I liked using 3rd party repositories until I started seeing parts of Core being replaced by 3rd party packages, sometimes adding whole new dependencies or removing features that I cared about. It's not politics. I hate politics. But I'll be using Fedora Extras.
Great - but what are they ? Posted Feb 4, 2005 13:58 UTC (Fri) by addw (guest, #1771) [Link] It is a shame that, having gone to all that effort, they don't make it usable for people. I took a quick look to see if there was interesting, I was presented with a list of package names - some of which I knew, others I didn't.
Is it too much to ask for a simple index ? Even a one line description of what each one does would make this much more usable. I have been in this game for a long time and I find it difficult, so what does the intelligent novice think ?
Summary: usual FLOSS failing of poor usability.
Great - but what are they ? Posted Feb 4, 2005 18:01 UTC (Fri) by skvidal (subscriber, #3094) [Link] you can get most of this information via yum:
if you have a stock install of fc3:
yum --disablerepo=base --disablerepo=updates-released info \*
That will give you a nice summary of all the packages in ONLY the extras repository.
I'd recommend outputting that to a file, though.
Is up2date going to pasture? Posted Feb 5, 2005 3:24 UTC (Sat) by macfisherman (guest, #6018) [Link] Or is yum the preferred tool? I ask because it seems strange to me to always see instructions for how to add the repository for yum but not for RH's native update tool.
Is up2date going to pasture? Posted Feb 9, 2005 11:46 UTC (Wed) by Kurrelgyre (guest, #5600) [Link] I've never seen ANY OFFICIAL document stating that up2date is being phased out in favor of yum. I'm getting a little tired of the assumption being made everywhere when no one's ever been able to point me at anything to back it up. I LIKE up2date as my frontend to RHN on RHEL and for yum repositories on FC.
So, to continue to use up2date, import the GPG key as indicated in the readme and then add the repository line for your appropriate release and architecture to /etc/sysconfig/rhn/sources:
# Fedora Extras for Fedora Core 3
That's it. When you eventually migrate to FC4, just switch the 3 to 4. Currently, only release 3 on i386 and x86_64 seem to have packages.
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