So this means that apt-get has been succesfully been ported to rpm 5.0 as well! I haven't really tested apt-get much besides getting it to build without warnings, so since it lacks regression tests and I don't use it myself, I leave it to others to test. :p

I would think that it should work fairly well though, at least urpmi works excellent with this compatibility wrapper, and not much changes needed to be done besides the C++ fixes.

I've posted the patch to apt-get mailing list, so I hope it gets applied upstream some time soon, in the meanwhile you can fetch the patch at http://lists.laiskiainen.org/pipermail/apt-rpm-laiskiainen.org/2008-March/000828.html .

Be sure to notice that this patch is against latest apt-get from git and requires latest code from rpm5.org rpm-5_0 branch (or soon to be released rpm 5.0.3), I've still to look into this one for HEAD..

Oh well, cheers to all, I know at least rpm5.org based distros like PCLinuxOS and Ark Linux should benefit from this a lot and help them migrate to rpm 5.0. :)

PS: I'll try make some rpm 5.0 packages for Mandriva available soon for anyone interested. ;) … continue reading

With a lot help from Jeff this job was mostly done through a C function wrapper making it easy to port applications and supporting both rpm5.org & rpm.org without having to do major modifications and ugly #ifdefs and what not. This wrapper is available at http://svn.mandriva.com/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/soft/rpm/perl-URPM/trunk/rpm5compat.h?view=log , but I will probably commit it to rpm5.org upstream soon unless noone objects as it should be usable to many others. There will still be needs for making adaptions in term of freeing of memory when using this as rpm 4 does it in a bit too different way for this wrapper to handle.

Some interesting things were noticed when doing urpmi regression tests with both rpm 4.4.2.3-rc1 & rpm 5.0.3(pre):

rpm 4.4.2.3-rc1:

Failed 3/30 test scripts. 105/2567 subtests failed.

Files=30, Tests=2567, 493 wallclock secs (274.52 cusr + 51.11 csys = 325.63 CPU)

Failed 3/30 test programs. 105/2567 subtests failed.

rpm 5.0.3(pre):

Failed 5/30 test scripts. 57/2558 subtests failed.

Files=30, Tests=2558, 1127 wallclock secs (249.68 cusr + 51.86 csys = 301.54 CPU)

Failed 5/30 test programs. 57/2558 subtests failed.

So there seems to be less regressions with rpm5 currently, this was surprising considering it being a quite recent major release! :)

With urpmi working I was also finally able to update my whole system for the first time in a month, about time! :D This will help out a lot in further rpm5 developments and being able to focus on more issues, I've been working on cleaning up and commiting our patches from rpm package in Mandriva to upstream and there's only a couple left to review, then they've all made it. This is about time since the amount of patches that's been maintained locally is everything but modest, oldest patch I found was done by Chmouel eight years ago!

This is not the last you'll hear from rpm5.org team! ;) … continue reading

This year the most interesting things were numerous talks related to (not surprisingly) packaging, long and many talks about rpm5 with Jeff and other rpm5.org people, Mancoosi with Stéphane Lauriere, talks about the new dep solver zypp by Micahel Scröder of SuSE and the talk about packagekit by Richard Hughes. Lots of new things to learn, get inspiration & ideas from and wanting to make use of. :D

I also hanged out with the Centos guys for dinner last night and had some discussions and talks, very interesting, also somewhat weird, it's amazing how different organization, technical philosophy and other issues for Fedora/Centos/RedHat/* is from what I'm used to at Mandriva! Very cool to get to learn of other things besides my heavily Mandriva biased world. Biased as I am, I do have my opinions about what is correct different from much of their opinions, but not on all topics, discussing such things makes us all learn a lot and get some different perspectives that are really nice. :)

One things that was a huge disappointment this year though was the lack of Mandriva presence, last year we did at least have a non-public room with many more people from Mandriva and also people from the community. This year I think I was the only Mandriva Linux person that weren't a part of the french group. This is really sad to see, having some sort of minimal presence at such events shouldn't be that hard to do on Mandriva's behalf and it's actually quite important. What's worse though is how there didn't seem to be anyone from the (international) Mandriva Linux community there besides me, it might be just the fact that there wasn't obtained a room this year, but somehow I fear that it runs deeper than that.. Over the last year so many people has left Mandriva, important people that are missed a lot, not only that, there seems to be a lot of people within the community that seems to have either left or being less and less active and caring less. While technical things has improved over the last year, non-technical things has worsened it seems, people that would discuss and complain about things in the past seems to have stopped complaining, but to me it seems the reason for this is that they've stopped caring in general. :/ Apathy and decrease of interest seems to be a problem among those who like me have been involved for the longest time, which I personally hates the most, these are after all the people I've known and been in touch with for so long and becoming friends with. Since there's a lot of new people joining the community over the years, these issues might not be seen as new people will help make up for those becoming inactive while not being aware of or as tired of issues, it's a real shame to see as it will prevent the growth and dedication of people..

It might be just me, with different perception mixed with some sentimentality and frustration, but I think these things has gone down hill, especially since Warly, which were THE greatest and most important guy left, and also all too many other great ones left since. None the less, I still have faith in this distribution and even the company behind it, good changes has come as well over the last year and the company performs better (which is very good since me and my brother bought around 50K of shares a little while back ;p), but I still think these changes are only improving some things in short term (which is of course really needed since the company needs to stay alive and make profits;), but real changes are needed and real issues really needs to be fixed and acknowledged! Actually thinking ahead in longer terms really needs to be done and not be dismissed as mutually exclusive.. Oh well, I won't rant further about issues that might not be visible or make sense to many, might even step on someones' toes as well.. ;p I'm just a bit frustrated after putting a lot of work, passion and dedication into this distribution since the beginning of this millenium, becoming sentimental would be expected, right? :)

I anyways hope that we can do better next year, giving things priority and trying to do some planning in time should help a lot, maybe trying to apply for a room together with some other project might help out as well. Much can be done, it's just a matter of doing it! :)

I myself has just recently started to get the movitation and ability to do stuff again, so I do really hope that I finally can accomplish and realise some of my ideas and plans for things related to these things and after FOSDEM I'm even more motivated and filled with ideas and inspiration. Such events are really great! :) I sure hope to see more of you next year, there's tons of new people that has come over the years that I have yet to meet. :)

Update: It seems like I put up a bit wrong impression implying that Mandriva intentionally didn't have a room at FOSDEM which was absolutely not the case. Mandriva did apply but were rejected since applications were evaluated individually and with Mandriva lacking resources and possibility to organize as well as others, it probably weren't considered as fair to give us a room. And for a secret room as last year they didn't want to give us a non-official room some other place due to security issues from previous year. So my suggestions in this blog was rather how to have a better chance at getting a room next year. :) … continue reading

But I am at FOSDEM at least! :)

Being out drinking last night till I got bored and then drinking out of boredom before calling it the night, I'm really positively surprised that I woke up early and isn't hung over, just incredibly hungry. So now I'm gonna head down to the breakfast at my hotel (this year I'm sleeping at a hotel with my own room, bathroom with even a bath tub in it in stead of at a cheap youth hostel sharing room with several other people snoring, ahhhh, sooo niiice hotel:) and then off to FOSDEM. If anyone wants to say hi or just punch me in the face while I'm here in brussels, you can reach me at +47 41681061. :) … continue reading

Haven't blogged much lately or done too much related to Mandriva, but right now I felt like writing a bit since I've just finished another assignment at school and found myself a bit less stressed and with a bit more time available. :) … continue reading

Trying to work full days at office made me really realize the fact that I'm burnout. :(

After being very passionate and involved in the Mandriva community since 2001, it really sucks when I have to decide to cut down my involvement considerably.. … continue reading

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