user-contrib package repository

[einar.hjortdal]

How do users submit packages to openmamba?

On the gitea repo all packages are in /rpms/, does it mean all packages that are distributed to openmamba users are vetted by openmamba devs? Is there no “official” user repository akin to fedora EPEL, or Arch AUR, etc.?

Also worth nothing: on my system /etc/yum.repos.d/ is empty, but there exists a /etc/yum/repos.d/ with repository configurations.

[Silvan]

As of today and for the last years there have been no users contributing so there are currently no contributions although a repository called devel-contrib exists for this.

So, if you are looking for contributions you will find nothing, if instead you want to propose yourself as a contributor, i.e. making packages that will be hosted in the openmamba devel-contrib repository and eventually be imported to the base repository, I may work to refresh and provide the tools and interfaces for contributors to make rpm packages according to openmamba standards. Contributing by making packages which openmamba users might install would require by the way some sort of user identification for legal reasons. If there is interest for this we can go into more detail.

The two /etc/yum.repos.d and /etc/yum/repos.d folders exist and are both supported because some external software  may provide their repository expecting to use the first path, while other tools like dnf (and openmamba) use the second path. One folder should be a symlink to the other but I have given this change a low priority because replacing folders with symlinks has always been a pain with rpm.

[einar.hjortdal]

Silvan wrote:

Contributing by making packages which openmamba users might install would require by the way some sort of user identification for legal reasons. If there is interest for this we can go into more detail.

I am surprised by this. Is this a requirement of the openmamba project, or is it an actual european/local issue? I value my online anonymity

[Silvan]

einar.hjortdal wrote:

Silvan wrote:

Contributing by making packages which openmamba users might install would require by the way some sort of user identification for legal reasons. If there is interest for this we can go into more detail.

I am surprised by this. Is this a requirement of the openmamba project, or is it an actual european/local issue? I value my online anonymity

There is currently no policy about accepting contributors in openmamba. I’m responsible of openmamba servers and consequently about the risks of accepting people to do things for which I might become at least part of a chain of responsibilities. openmamba is in fact a single maintainer driven distribution which makes it different from a community driven distribution, maybe I should make this more clear so that users may better target their interest, questions and comments accordignly.

A packager might well remain under a pseudonym for the public but I need to accept only trusted people (by me) for binary packages submissions on openmamba repositories. Because you cited Arch Linux, you may have already read their policy for maintainer where candidates need to be presented by two sponsoring maintainers and voted for admission. Contributing to AUR is far less strict because people are only expected to send the PKGBUILD file (plus any patches and other related files), a text file which can be easily audited. The same may be applied to .spec files but openmamba distributes binary packages so things are different in terms of letting anybody to upload packages.

A contributor might want to start learning and creating packages for openmamba in his local environment and if you express that you have this interest the discussion might evolve into discussing the technical details on how to do this. This might be a step allowing to evaluate the quality of the produced packages followed by giving the authorization to send contributions to the openmamba hosted repositories.

• This reply was modified 6 days, 5 hours ago by Silvan.

[einar.hjortdal]

Silvan wrote:

openmamba is in fact a single maintainer driven distribution

I had no idea. Damn! You’re doing an incredible job.

Silvan wrote:

The same may be applied to .spec files

This is what I had in mind, I had contributed to OpenMandriva a couple years ago and they accepted .spec files and relative patches. Their build system builds the package by pulling sources and compiling when necessary, then puts it on the repository. No uploading of binaries.

Silvan wrote:

A contributor might want to start learning and creating packages for openmamba in his local environment and if you express that you have this interest the discussion might evolve into discussing the technical details on how to do this.

I would like that. And if necessary, I may host my own user rpm repository, with packages built according to openmamba standards.

[Silvan]

einar.hjortdal wrote:

Silvan wrote:

A contributor might want to start learning and creating packages for openmamba in his local environment and if you express that you have this interest the discussion might evolve into discussing the technical details on how to do this.

I would like that. And if necessary, I may host my own user rpm repository, with packages built according to openmamba standards.

Good,
the most straightforward and interesting way to start is by creating and using a Docker buildvm image which provides you locally with the webbuild interface, which is what is used to create and update openmamba packages. I’ve checked that it currently works correctly by cloning the openmamba-docker-buildvm repository:

git clone https://src.openmamba.org/openmamba/openmamba-docker-buildvm

and follow the instructions in the project page.

We can discuss about any doubts or problems before or after you have setup the Docker buildvm container.

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