Legacy/Status

Here are some thoughts put together by JesseKeating and DavidEisenstein on the current status of the Fedora Legacy project.

= Fedora Legacy - status summary -- 2006-Jun-09 thru early Nov, 2006 =


 * What do we have?
 * What do we need?
 * Where are we going?

We have
A. A bad reputation (source: http://lwn.net/Articles/204722/ ... confirmation: http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-advisory-board/2006-November/msg00032.html ).

A. Ongoing security maintenance work for rhl7.3, rhl9 (ending at end of 2006), fc3, fc4.

A. Arguably an over-complex, cumbersome process documented and in-place for pushing out security updates for Maintenance Mode Fedora Core releases that indeed needs revamping, streamlining, and prettifying to encourage many more volunteers to pitch in (see discussion among the postings of the "lwn article on the death of Fedora Legacy" thread at http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-legacy-list/2006-October/thread.html#00029, including some excellent posts by Jesse I M HO.)

A. People: (this letter perhaps a little dated) Michal Jaegermann
 * 4-7 regular reporters/trackers of new bug reports (some who have gotten much more irregular over the last 5-6 months) for vulnerabilities:

John Dalbec

David Eisenstein

Marc Deslauriers

Pavel Kankovsky

Jeff Sheltren

(a few random people here and there)

Marc Deslauriers
 * Package/patch proposers/submitters:

Donald Maner

Jeff Sheltren

Pekka Savola

David Eisenstein

Jesse Keating (can sign and push, irregular contributor)
 * 3-4 builders:

Marc Deslauriers (can sign and push, has been on holiday for a couple months)

David Eisenstein (recently started pushing, working on signing)

Jeff Sheltren (works on plague/mock)

Dominic Hargreaves
 * 1 retired builder

Pekka Savola
 * 1 regular "publish" QA'er

John Dalbec
 * a few regular "verify" QA'ers

Tom Yates

Eric Rostetter

David Eisenstein

Marc Deslarier

Pekka Savola

Pekka Savola
 * 1 maintainer of the "in queue/to-do" list:

Eric Rostetter (fedoralegacy.org site, wiki)
 * A few official and unofficial documentors:

Jesse Keating (fedoralegacy.org, wiki)

Jeff Sheltren (wiki)

David Eisenstein (wiki)

Rahul Sundaram (wiki)

http://fedoralegacy.org/
 * Websites of our own:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legacy

download.fedoralegacy.org + a worldwide mirroring system
 * A download infrastructure

turbosphere.fedoralegacy.org.
 * A plague/mock build-system


 * Some roles defined (some filled, but not all): (see  http://fedoralegacy.org/participate/)
 * Vulnerability Tracker
 * Vulnerability analyst and patch creator
 * Test RPM packager
 * QA tester
 * Publisher (Release Manager)
 * General Helper
 * Resource contributor
 * Webmaster
 * Press Contact/public relations
 * Documentation Writer/Technical Writer

A. Packages: 4 awaiting release
 * Bugzilla Bugs pending as of 6/2/2006: (possible multiple packages per bug) (from http://www.netcore.fi/pekkas/buglist.html)

3 awaiting build to updates-testing

1 awaiting verify votes

0 awaiting publish votes

2 awaiting discussion

25 needing work

37 deferred (generally non-security fixes requested, possibly due to regression bugs in previous security fixes)

36 other (have not been given status, but mostly security bugs)

---

108 Pending Bugs

We need
A. More builders -- especially in light of http://lwn.net/Articles/204722/ ("LWN: An empty legacy") and ensuing discussion http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-legacy-list/2006-October/thread.html#00029.

A. More testers

A. More testers

A. A fresh start, a new name, a lower load (?) -- see http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-advisory-board/2006-November/msg00032.html.

Where are we going?
This section outlines our migration plan to integrate with the  Fedora Infrastructure, where   Fedora Extras  is located.

A.  Plague  instance for Legacy
 * This should probably be separate from the  Extras  plague instance so that we don't disrupt them and they don't distrupt us.
 * Build machines could be the same as extras, just an added instance for Legacy.

A. A  CVS  tree for Legacy to use. (DONE, by Jesse Keating & Fedora Infrastructure)
 * Used for Packages and Tools
 * Initially a copy of Fedora trees that we can commit to  (DONE)
 * Use Fedora Account System legacy group for CVS ACL      (DONE -- group 'cvslegacy')

A. A legacy group within the  Fedora Account System
 * Used for CVS ACLs         (DONE -- group 'cvslegacy')
 * Used for bugzilla rights  (Done yet?)  (Any particular set of rights?)

A. Publishing Software
 * A directory to publish to on download.fedora.redhat.com to use the existing mirroring infrastructure     (NOT DONE YET)
 * Start sending announcements to Fedora Package Announce List    (NOT DONE YET   any ETA?)
 * A copy of the Fedora Update Tool used within Red Hat to manage package updates (This -- hanging on the availability of a particular Red Hat Engineer to do it for us?)
 * A package signing script to gpg sign packages prior to pushing  (NOT DONE YET)

A. Web presense within Fedora's Plone
 * Migrate fedoralegacy.org content to Plone for static content
 * Plone is held up due to python versioning on fpserv.fedoraproject.org which means plone won't become active until RHEL 5 is out, probably in January 2007 or later.

Migration Progress
The Fedora Board has approved our plan to integrate. They have asked us to make it happen. Initial integration will focus only on supporting FC3 and above. Our target integration date was just prior to Fedora Core 6 Test 2 (See  schedule ). Continued support of RHL7.3 and RHL9 is continuing until the end of 2006, though no new security issues are supposed to be entered after October 1st, 2006. FC1/2 support was dropped at FC6T2 (mid-August). If they are going to continue to be supported, they will have to be supported in the exisiting Legacy infrastructure.