Developer/Fedora

Introduction

OLPC maintains a variant of the F-7 Fedora Linux distribution. Over the course of their careers developing for the XO, most developers eventually need to package software for the XO, either because they wish to fix a bug in software contained in an existing package or because they wish to contribute new software (other than activities) to the system. This document is intended to explain how to package bug fixes for OLPC system software that is maintained in Fedora. Other documents, such as [1] discuss the less common case of adding entirely new pieces of software to Fedora and of adding new activities, which are not currently maintained in Fedora.

Instructions

There are two broad kinds of work that must be done to be able to take responsibility for maintaining an OLPC fork of a Fedora package - requesting authority to maintain a Fedora package and learning how to maintain a Fedora package. Fortunately, these tasks can be performed in parallel.

Requesting Authority to Help Maintain an Existing Package or Branch of a Package

1. Announce interest in helping with fork X
2. Request a RedHat Bugzilla account
3. Request a Fedora account
4. Sign the Fedora Contributors License Agreement (CLA)
5. Request membership in the cvsextras group.
6. Ask a Fedora Package Maintainer (such as most OLPC developers) to sponsor you.
7. Request authority to update the OLPC branch of the package you want to fix.

Learning How to Maintain a Package

1. Get an account on teach.laptop.org, install Fedora yourself, or install appropriate packages if your distribution supports them;
2. Anonymously check out your package from Fedora CVS
3. Use mock or rpmbuild to learn how to build your package
4. [Politely] Seek help from OLPC and Fedora developers as you discover confusions.