Developer/Fedora

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Introduction

OLPC maintains a variant of the Fedora Linux distribution. Many developers, over the course of their careers developing for the XO, develop a 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 Join the package collection maintainers 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.

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.

Terminology

upstream authors
are people who release source code for consumption by package maintainers and who accept or reject patches from interested individuals
package maintainers
are people who accept source code releases from upstream authors and who combine that source code with packaging instructions in order to produce packaged software
package maintainers are also responsible for contributing patches to upstream authors that fix bugs or that make the upstream software inter-operate more smoothly with other software
Frequently in OLPC, package maintainers and upstream authors are the same person.
source releases
are typically tarballs of source code that have been permanently published at a fixed URL, along with validation data such as MD5sums or the author's public key and a digital signature.
(it's important for many reasons that source code be permanently accessible for all packages. Please make sure that yours is.)
packaging instructions
consist of a '.spec' file and zero or more patches to a source release.
packaged source code
is the 'source object' of a software distribution much as '.c' and '.h' files are the units of source code for building C binary objects.
packaged software
is the 'binary object' of a software distribution much as '.o' files are the binary objects linked together to produce C binaries


Outside Reading

Here is a collection of sites that I have found useful in learning to maintain Fedora packages for OLPC:

Fedora Procedures

RPM Hints

Making or Modifying RPMS

Fedora Infrastructure


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

First and most important - if you get confused, ask for help! (Then help improve this page!)

Next, let's assume that you've demonstrated the interest and ability required to help to maintain an OLPC branch of a Fedora package. I'll use the OLPC branch of xkeyboard-config as a running example. Then, you might:

  1. Request a RedHat Bugzilla account
    • RedHat and Fedora use Bugzilla extensively to keep track of administrative tasks relating to package maintenance.
  2. Request a Fedora account
  3. Request membership in the fedorabugs and cvsextras groups through FAS2.
  4. Ask a Fedora Package Maintainer (such as dgilmore) to sponsor you.
  5. Use your Fedora account to request authority to update the OLPC branch of the package you want to fix.


Learning How to Maintain a Package

  1. Request an account on teach.laptop.org, install Fedora yourself, or install appropriate packages (rpmbuild, rpmdevtools, mock, and koji) if your distribution offers recent versions;
  2. Anonymously check out your package from Fedora CVS 
    CVSROOT=:pserver:anonymous@cvs.fedoraproject.org:/cvs/pkgs
    cvs co <module>
  3. Use mock or rpmbuild to learn how to build your package 
    cd <module>/OLPC-2
    make mockbuild MOCKCFG=fedora-7-i386
  4. [Politely] Seek help from OLPC and Fedora developers as you discover confusions.


Placing a Package into a Build Stream

Once you've managed to modify your chosen package and to produce mock-built RPMs which satisfy you, then it's time to make your modifications available to the wider OLPC world. To do this, you need to insert your packages into an OLPC buildstream, either by (recommended) building and tagging them in Fedora's Koji package maintenance system or (cheap-skates) by placing them in an appropriate dropbox on dev.laptop.org. The exact tags or stream-names you should use will vary over time and depending on the specific nature of your work. Ask on OLPC's development IRC channels for the most up-to-date information. After you have completed one of these steps, then your package can be included in an OLPC build. Depending on the exact build stream you're working in, this may occur automatically or you may be required to negotiate with your build stream's maintainer.

Notes on forking packages for OLPC

Transcribed directly from Dennis Gilmore (dgilmore) on IRC for now; clean up welcome! 

you to get something branched for OLPC-3 you need to make a request in bugzilla.redhat.com
on the review bug.  i suggest that you try contact the package maintainer first.  they may be 
willing to maintain for OLPC,  they also may have other ideas on how to fix the issue that is 
being seen.  eliminating the need for a branch.

there is a bot in #fedora-devel called zodbot  it will tell you who owns the package.  or you 
can look in pkgdb

zodbot has a fas commant that will give you contact details given a username

dgilmore: do you have a package w/ upstreamed olpc-specific changes that's a good template to 
look at?

ntp was repackaged because of olpc

(02:20:43 PM) dgilmore: cscott: there are different senarios that warrant different actions

See also

  • OLPC-3 and OLPC-4 list issues involved in migrating the XO OS software to Fedora 9 and Fedora 10, respectively, in 2008.
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