Distributions

News and Editorials

When developers go MIA

MIA means "Missing in Action". When a project is built by volunteers, as is the case with most Linux distributions, sometimes packages with bugs linger and are not fixed for long periods of time. The developer is MIA. There are many reasons that a developer might have for not taking care of their packages as promised. There will be times with the demands of work, school, family, or whatever will take precedence over volunteer work. In an ideal case the person will tell someone that they won't be around for a while. They might even find someone else to take over for them while they are gone. All too often though they don't do anything at all and thereby become MIA.

Both Debian and Fedora have made proposals for dealing with MIA developers this week so we wanted to take a closer look at how these projects are dealing with this problem. Keep in mind that Fedora and Debian are different projects, with different goals. Fedora is fast paced, with a release every six months. They can't allow buggy packages to linger for long. Debian's release cycle is long, but they have large number of packages to maintain and a large number of developers to keep track of.

Debian's Bits from the MIA team goes beyond a proposal and outlines what is now the current policy for dealing with MIA maintainers. The MIA team met recently in Spain to flesh out the details. The MIA team is a small group of people who are tasked with identifying and attempting to contact maintainers who no longer seem to be active.

Team members have access to several MIA scripts which can be used to identify unresponsive maintainers. "The most important tool is "mia-query" where you can see the history from the person, which packages he/she maintains and the last-activity." The process is lengthy, allowing 15 days after each attempted contact before proceeding to the next stage. After sixty days the maintainer's packages will be orphaned so that some other maintainer might adopt them. Only after ninety days will the person be subject to removal from the keyring, if they are Debian Developers (DD) or Debian Maintainers (DM). For packages that are team maintained the missing person will be removed from the Uploaders/Maintainers-field after sixty days.

Fedora's proposal is still the initial stages. The idea is to automate the process as much as possible. "This proposal aims to create a framework for automating the detection and processing of MIA maintainers. The framework will touch upon bugzilla, pkgdb, koji, and various automated QA efforts. It will tie into the (new) policy of automatically cleaning up orphans created during a release at the start of the next development cycle."

A scheduled process will query bugzilla, looking for a certain class of bugs. If the maintainer reaction time meets a certain criteria, the maintainer will be marked as MIA.

How these bugs are identified in Bugzilla remains to be solved. Several automated QA tasks identified so far include: broken dependencies tests, rebuild tests, package/file conflict tests, and upgrade path violation tests. "Most of these tasks will need to grow the ability to file bugs for the issues discovered, with the logic to prevent multiple filings for the same issue. As stated above, a keyword or a flag or something will be added to the bug so that it can be easily identified at a later time."

Many details remain in this proposal, such as the particular allotment of times for responses, the method that will be used in bugzilla to mark a bug for MIA detection, who will make use of that method, who will work on the detection/processing tool, who will be notified of a maintainer going MIA, whether all packages owned by the MIA maintainer get orphaned, and so on.

A truly automated system for identifying MIA maintainers will likely be of interest to other projects, especially if it can be adapted to other infrastructures.

Comments (1 posted)

New Releases

Mandriva Directory Server 2.2.0 available

Mandriva Directory Server 2.2.0 is available for download. New features and improvements include DNS/DHCP management improvements, XML-RPC server session management, and Brazilian Portuguese translation.

Full Story (comments: none)

Announcing openSUSE 11.0 Alpha0

The first alpha release of openSUSE 11.0 is available for testing. "The change between 10.3 and Alpha0 is pretty big, but it still works pretty nicely. So please join the openSUSE 11.0 development in downloading, testing and using Alpha0 or daily updated Factory distribution."

Full Story (comments: none)

dynebolic - dyne:II GNU/Linux 2.5.2 DHORUBA - final release

RastaSoft has released the dyne:II based dynebolic 2.5.2 DHORUBA. "The system is stabilized for the final release of the dyne:II series. This is a major bugfix for usb detection, encrypted nesting, international keyboard input, firewire video capture and playback. New software includes darkice/snow, oggfwd and dvgrab for minimalistic commandline streaming receipts. Updated software include Blender, Cinelerra and FreeJ. The image.dyne module is included by default. The User's Manual has been completed with more informations."

Full Story (comments: none)

Distribution News

Debian GNU/Linux

Final report from DebConf 7

A report from the 7th Debian Developers' Conference, held last June in Edinburgh, Scotland, has been posted as a 30-page PDF file. "Over 400 people took part in this year's conference: listening to the talks; discussing development issues; working closely with their fellow developers. And, of course, enjoying themselves. This report hopes to provide some insight into DebConf for those who were unable to attend. It will cover the major parts of DebConf and provide a look at the work of the organising team. It will also include the personal impressions of some of the attendees." It's clear that quite a bit of time went into the creation of this document.

Comments (5 posted)

Bits from the Extremadura QA meeting

Fifteen Debian developers gathered in Mérida (Spain) for a Quality Assurance meeting, part of the series of meetings sponsored by the Junta de Extremadura. Click below for a look at the meeting minutes.

Full Story (comments: none)

Fedora

Samba for Fedora Core 6

Fedora Core 6 reached its end of life on Friday, December 7. Even so, new samba packages that fix the recent samba vulnerability (CVE-2007-6015) have been made available.

Full Story (comments: 3)

Mandriva Linux

2008 Spring development update

Adam Williamson presents a tentative timeline for Mandriva 2008 Spring (2008.1). The current schedule shows the first alpha release on December 13. The final release is scheduled for April 2008.

Comments (none posted)

SUSE Linux and openSUSE

Minutes from last openSUSE board meeting

Some meeting minutes of the public part of the discussions from the last openSUSE board meeting are available. Click below to see them.

Full Story (comments: none)

Other distributions

Skolelinux wins the Scandinavian Free Software award

Free Software Foundation Europe has announced that the Norwegian project Skolelinux is the winner of the first Free Software Scandinavian Award handed out at during the Free Software Conference Scandinavia 2007 in Göteborg. "Skolelinux captures a big part of the free software spirit; sharing and reusing. By focusing on schools, Skolelinux makes sure students, tomorrow's computer users, and decision makers, can grow up in a spirit of sharing, reusing and learning from family, friends and neighbours."

Comments (none posted)

GNU-Darwin 7th year report

The GNU-Darwin project has issued its 7th annual report, with a look at the stories that have gone out this year. "We have had a surge in pkg_add access to our package repository since that time, indicating that GNU-Darwin is far from dead as of yet ;-}. The iPhone bricking story was of particular moment."

Full Story (comments: none)

New Distributions

Geubuntu

Geubuntu is an Ubuntu-based desktop distribution that uses parts of the GNOME desktop with the eye-catching Enlightenment DR17 window manager. Geubuntu 7.10 Luna Nuova was released December 6, 2007. From the project's home page: "That's where Geubuntu comes in. Geubuntu completes the missing parts of the E17 Desktop Shell and WM with a certain number of tools and applications from the Gnome Desktop. This is only natural, after all: it would be crazy to believe that E17 should provide a full set of applications based on ETK instead of GTK!"

Comments (none posted)

Distribution Newsletters

Concurrent's Solutions Newsletter

Concurrent's Solutions Newsletter (PDF) takes a look at RedHawk Linux, Concurrent's real-time Linux OS.

Comments (none posted)

Fedora Weekly News Issue 112

The Fedora Weekly News for December 3, 2007 looks at FUDCon Raleigh 2008, plus Planet Fedora articles "CentOS really does fill a gap", "Fedora 8 Re-Spin in the making", "FDSCo nominations underway", "Fedora update metrics", "FAmSCo nominations/elections", and several other topics.

Full Story (comments: none)

openSUSE Weekly News, Issue 3

The openSUSE Weekly News is with a look at openSUSE 11.0 Alpha 0, updated 10.3+ Live CD available for Final Testing, KDE Four Live 0.8, KDE 4.0 RC2 Packages, and Koffice Alpha6 Packages, and more. Read it in English or German.

Full Story (comments: none)

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #69

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter for December 8, 2007 covers Packaging Jams, MPAA being forced to remove the University Toolkit, Kubuntu Tutorials Day, an Ubuntu Forums interview, and much more.

Full Story (comments: none)

DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 232

The DistroWatch Weekly for December 10, 2007 is out. "One of the indications of Ubuntu's popularity is the number of derivatives based on Canonical's operating system, available for every taste and purpose. Last week, two such distributions were added to the DistroWatch database - Mythbuntu, a project delivering MythTV in an easy-to-setup package, and Geubuntu, an eye-catching distro featuring the latest Enlightenment window manager. Read our exclusive review of the latter. Also in this edition: openSUSE kickstarts the development of version 11.0 with the first alpha release, a link to article discussing the importance of "libre" distributions, information about a free online RHCE study guide, and some observations about the new ASUS Eee PC."

Comments (none posted)

Distribution meetings

Debian Miniconf 7 at linux.conf.au 2008 in Melbourne, Australia

This is a call for participation in the seventh annual Debian Miniconf which will be part of the linux.conf.au (LCA) 2008 conference run by Linux Australia in Melbourne, Australia in January.

Full Story (comments: none)

Newsletters and articles of interest

Fedora 8 - More than a Linux Distribution (Packt Publishing)

Packt Publishing takes a look at Fedora 8. "What I haven't mentioned till now is that Fedora 8 itself is a fantastic release. Desktop users will enjoy its desktop wallpaper that changes color depending on the time of the day, the easy to use Firewall configuration tool and enhanced printer and network management in addition to the Compiz 3D desktop. I love the improved package management which makes adding software from the DVD and other online repositories, not only possible but a walk in the park. Fedora 8 also finds a solution for its inability to support patented media formats in the form of CodecBuddy."

Comments (none posted)

Page editor: Rebecca Sobol
Next page: Development>>