~kanarip

Fedora Unity has a new Fedora 11 Re-Spin in testing, again with some updates to anaconda. That's what I wanted to talk about in this blog post;

Given the recent storage rewrite done in Fedora 11's development cycle, there's bound to be a number of bugs logged against anaconda -because of this storage rewrite. For these bugs to be resolved, the anaconda developers change code and commit to "master" which is then released to rawhide as a new build. As such, there's a bunch of patches in rawhide anaconda resolve F-11 bugs and that we (you?, me?, Fedora Unity?) would like to see in F-11 anaconda -because we remix and respin including the updates repository or because we've been experiencing one of these particular bugs.

The anaconda developers have done a great job by rewriting the entire storage layer in just under 4 or 5 months or so, and I've heard from a lot of people that their problems with previous Fedora releases where resolved. Also know that a rewrite like this is to be expected to show some cracks and to get a few bugs because of it. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

I've not written a single line of code related to the fixes I applied to the f11-branch of anaconda, and instead could just walk through the Bugzilla list for anaconda and choose the bugs and choose the appropriate git commits from rawhide and cherry-pick them into the f11-branch. Job done ;-)

The builds I had done for an updated anaconda were wrong once or twice, obviously because of me, when apparently I forgot or missed a commit or two, or did something else wrong, and this is where the Fedora Unity Test Team is so very valuable in this process. We decide we want to do a Re-Spin, wait for me to do whatever foo I do, test the Re-Spin and if *anything* is wrong, send me back to the drawing board.

The anaconda team is also willing to take the set of cherry-picks that I've done, possibly briefly review them (they probably will), possibly include other patches from other people (we've seen s390x specific patches go into updates to anaconda before as well), and release an update for F-11!

<o/  <o/  <o/

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So here's the list of cherry-picks: http://git.kanarip.com/?p=anaconda;a=shortlog;h=f11-branch (14 cherry-picked commits and 4 updated translations after 11.5.0.59-1 which is the Fedora 11 GA version)

As you can see the only commits I do myself are bumping the version number ;-))

Let's hope this new Re-Spin passes testing for a change, since I've released 3 Re-Spins to the Fedora Unity Test Team in one week, and I'd regret it if this one fails because of another mistake I've made!

The Fedora Project has put installation media CDs with it's back to the wall, has loaded and aimed it's guns, and is ready to pull the trigger in 5 months. Here's the start of the thread on fedora-devel-list.

As you probably know, Fedora Unity releases Fedora once or twice or trice after the general availability for a given release, in the form of Re-Spins. We've included CD Installation media in our Re-Spins even if the official Fedora distribution didn't have them generally available (which was the case for Fedora 7 and Fedora 8).

The discussion on fedora-devel-list right now seems to evolve around simple statistics, but...

Regrettably, Fedora Unity lacks the statistics on how many times our Re-Spin is downloaded. If, at all, the numbers that we have are complete and trustworthy, then these are the amazing numbers.

Note that you should never trust statistics.

Our numbers at http://spinner.fedoraunity.org:6969/ show a grand total of over 5000 complete downloads (those of Fedora 8 not included), and over 22000 pending downloads... This I suspect is a number so wrong... If you believe this number let me give you another shock: Santa Claus does not exist and has never existed.

The other number says over 17.000 torrent clients have downloaded our products. Now this number I could argue could be true... but I simply don't know, so I'll let you make up your own mind.

The statistics we don't have include your Jigdo downloads for every release that we do (and have done with the help of Jigdo since Fedora 7 or so), but it's obvious that our Re-Spins are downloaded a lot. An awful lot, even. Even if the numbers I refer to are not at all true... given the amount of feedback that we get, the amount of requests for a new Re-Spin even just after a new Fedora release comes out ("Can you please, please include the 0-day updates???"), I suspect the number of users is in the thousands.

We, Fedora Unity, obviously provide Re-Spins as a service to the community. Those that like the pie, get the pie, then eat the pie. We're not as much concerned with the number of downloads... For us, it's a matter of quality, not quantity.

Quality in how you experience a Fedora installation a few months and a few hundred updates later. Quality in enabling fixes to be backported in to the installer images so that Fedora actually improves and the release matures or stabilizes. Not the quantity of hard numbers we can't trust -the number of downloads through one method or another.

Ergo, in the discussion on whether the Fedora Project should re-consider it's decision to include CD media in it's release once again, after re-including CD media in the release with Fedora 9 following some pressure from within the community, I can only argue that the numbers shown are not entirely representative, and that Fedora Unity will not bend over to lame argumentation, and Fedora Unity will continue providing this service to the community. The question is, how far will the Fedora Project let Fedora Unity do so through the Fedora Project proper? Now that this question has been asked, I'm wondering what the answer would look like. Mean time, if you have purpose for CD media, I suggest you join the discussion and have your voice be heard. Now.