How to join the Fedora Package Collection Maintainers?

So, you've decided to become a package maintainer in the Fedora Project? This guide will lead you through your first package submission.

The guide was simply described by Jakub 'Livio' Rusinek in his blog for other polish folks to make becoming packagers simpler and more understandable for them.

Becoming a Fedora Package Collection Maintainer

Read the Guidelines

Read the Packaging Guidelines and Package Naming Guidelines.

You need to be thoroughly familiar with these. They govern all package submissions. If you have questions, ask on the Fedora Packaging List.

Create a Bugzilla Account

Make sure you have an account in Red Hat Bugzilla.

The email address that you use for your bugzilla account should be the same email address as you use for all things related to Fedora Packaging.

Join the important Mailing Lists

You must join the fedora-devel-announce@redhat.com mailing list. It is a low traffic announcements only list, where important development information is posted.

You can join the fedora-devel-list@redhat.com mailing list, where discussions about the development of Fedora are held. This is a high traffic mailing list.

You can also consider joining the fedora-extras-commits@redhat.com mailing list -- The commits mailing list gets notifications on all commits in any package in the Fedora repository. This is a very high traffic mailing list. The Fedora package database sends commit mails for packages you (co-)maintain.

Read Other Submissions

Read some other package submissions to learn about packaging and gain familiarity with the process and requirements.

One way of doing this is to join the fedora-package-review@redhat.com mailing list; all comments on Fedora package reviews are sent to this (read-only) list.

Make a Package

You should make sure that it is a new package. The package you are submitting can be of any Free and open source project that is not already packaged in Fedora. You can find a list of existing packages in Fedora Package Collection in the Fedora Package Database. Please check also the list of packages, that are currently reviewed and the list of retired packages.

• Make sure that your package meets the Packaging Guidelines and PackageNamingGuidelines.

• Be aware of ForbiddenItems and Package Review Guidelines (they will be used during the package review).

Upload Your Package

Upload your SRPM and SPEC files onto the Internet somewhere. This can be anywhere accessible by a URL.

Create Your Review Request

Fill out this form:

• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/enter_bug.cgi?product=Fedora&format=extras-review

• Make sure that you put the name of the package (excluding version and release numbers) in the 'Review Summary' field, along with a very brief summary of what the package is.

• Put a description of your package (usually, this can be the same thing as what you put in the spec %description) in the 'Review Description' field. Include the URLs to your SRPM and SPEC files. Also, explain that this is your first package and you need a sponsor.

  Make sure that you mention in the 'Review Description' field that this is your first package, and you are seeking a sponsor. In Fedora Package Collection, all new contributors must be sponsored. Some potential sponsors will look at the FE-NEEDSPONSOR bug in bugzilla to find packages to review. You can add your package to this list by editing your review request bug and adding FE-NEEDSPONSOR in the 'Bug xyz blocks' field (where xyz is the bug number for your review request).

The review process is described in detail on the Package Review Process page.

Watch for Feedback

Watch the Bugzilla report for your first package. You should get notifications of changes by email. Fix any blockers that the reviewer(s) point out.

Get a Fedora Account

Create an account in the Fedora Account System

1. Visit the account system home:

   • https://admin.fedoraproject.org/accounts/

2. Click on 'New account' and fill in the blanks.
3. After you create your account, please be sure to sign the CLA (if you click on the "My Account" link in the top right, you should see CLA: CLA Done)

   • Note: Red Hat employees should apply for cla_redhat instead. From the Account System, Apply for a New Group, put cla_redhat in the group field, and click Apply. Then ask TomCallaway to approve you.

4. Once you get email confirmation that your account has been created and you're a member of the cla_done group, return to edit your account:

   • https://admin.fedoraproject.org/accounts/group/list?search=cvsextras*

   • In the table, look for the cvsextras group, and click Apply under Status.

   • Once this is done, your account will show up as "pending" to all of the Fedora Package Collection sponsors (who will receive an email).
   • When you are sponsored, you will be automatically added/approved to the fedorabugs group as well. This will allow you to make changes to the state of bugs in Bugzilla, which is what you'll need to do to get them checked in. It will also allow you to do complete package reviews, including approving packages yourself!

Get Sponsored

When the package is APPROVED by the reviewer, you must separately obtain member sponsorship in order to check in and build your package. Sponsorship is not automatic and may require that you further participate in other ways in order to demonstrate your understanding of the packaging guidelines. Key to becoming sponsored is to convince an existing sponsor-level member that you understand and follow the project's guidelines and processes.

See PackageMaintainers/HowToGetSponsored for more information on the process of becoming sponsored.

• First reviews for new packagers must be done by registered sponsors. Informal reviews can be done by anyone interested.

  1.Your sponsor can approve your request and move you from "pending" to "sponsored". You should receive email confirmation of your sponsorship.
• Generate a client side certificate:

  • https://admin.fedoraproject.org/accounts/user/gencert

    Place the file in ~/.fedora.cert, where the Fedora CVS configuration will look for it by default.

    You'll also need two more certs: The certificate for the Certificate Authority used to sign the user keys (that's available from fedora-upload-ca.cert save that as ~/.fedora-upload-ca.cert) and the certificate for the Certificate Authority used to sign the buildsystem's server keys (that's available from fedora-server-ca.cert save that as ~/.fedora-server-ca.cert)

Install the Client Tools

fedora-packager provides tools to help you setup and work with fedora. to install fedora-packager run

 yum install fedora-packager

To build Packages for Fedora EPEL, you need Plague and for Fedora 7 and later (including devel) you need Koji.

After installation as your user run fedora-packager-setup to setup your user environment. This will get you ready to use koji. To use plague follow Plague instructions.

• This is important. Without this, you won't be able to request package builds.

To checkout from cvs run fedora-cvs <module names seperated by spaces> for example

fedora-cvs konversation mysql-gui-tools snort

• Running ssh-add before doing any cvs operations is a very good idea. It will save you from having to type your key password for every operation. You only have to run ssh-add once per session, it will remember it until you log out or reboot.

Add Package to CVS and Set Owner

Follow:

• PackageMaintainers/CVSAdminProcedure

to get a CVS module for your new package and branches for recent releases.

This will be used to set up the proper records in the owners database, which is used for access to build the package, bugzilla population, and other features. This step creates a CVS module for your new package, with empty directories for each requested distribution.

Import Your Package

Use cvs to check out your now empty package module:

• fedora-cvs packagename
  

  It might not be a bad idea to make a "cvs" directory, then check out your files inside of that.

  If this step fails, be sure your private ssh key (~/.ssh/id_dsa) mode is set to 0400. You might have to wait for up to an hour after your request for a new CVS module has been approved to get write access. Make sure your public key is the same as in the Fedora Accounts system.

After you have checked out your module, find the common/cvs-import.sh script and run:

• ./common/cvs-import.sh <nameofyour.src.rpm>
  

  Obviously, replace <nameofyour.src.rpm> with the full path to your approved SRPM.

This imports into only the devel branch. You will want to use the -b parameter in order to import into other distribution branches like FC-6.

Checkout the module

You are ready to checkout your module from CVS:

• fedora-cvs <packagename>
  

  Where <packagename> should be replaced with the name of your package.

You should now have a directory named after your package with a directory for each branch inside of it.

Tag Your Branches

Branches are FC-#, devel, etc.

Before a branch can be built in the Fedora Package build system, the files in that branch must be tagged in CVS. When you're happy with the source, go into the branch directory (e.g. cd devel/) and run:

• make tag
  

You should see it tag the branch with the version and release from the SPEC file. You need to tag all of the branches that you want to build.

Request Builds

For each tagged branch that you'd like to request a build for, go into the branch directory (e.g. cd devel/) and run:

• make build
  

If everything goes well, it should queue up your branch for building, the package will cleanly build, and you're done!

If it fails to build, the build system will send you an email to report the failure and show you to the logs. Commit any needed changes to cvs, bump the SPEC release number, retag the branch, and request a new build.

Clean Up

Close the Bugzilla ticket when the package has been built successfully. Remember the Bugzilla ticket for your review? You should close it as NEXTRELEASE.

Request updates to released Fedoras for your new package

Use Bodhi to request enhancement updates for each released Fedora you are bringing a new package to. Web interface to Bodhi is here.

Getting Help

We know that this process can be as clear as mud sometimes, and we're always trying to make it better. If you run into any problems, or have any questions, please ask on the fedora-devel-list mailing list or in #fedora-devel on freenode. See the Communicate page for details.

The Fedora Mentors Project has people willing to help new contributors in their packaging efforts. See the Mentors page for more information.

There is also a helpful CVS FAQ here: PackageMaintainers/UsingCvsFaq

Getting a new package into Fedora Package Collection for existing maintainers

If you already maintain a package in Fedora and want to maintain another, follow the new package process.