[Dev] request for shell/git access

[bill-auger]

On 09/03/2017 11:34 AM, Andreas Grapentin wrote:
> My take on graphical tools or not is that there is no harm in having a
> gui based installer and a traditional cli live-cd for installing.

clearly there is no harm in it - the point that was raised is that
perhaps parabola should actively discourage such user-friendly
("crutch") tools in order to promote the "archie ideals" of education,
experimentation, and self-sufficiency - i have been suspecting that the
lack of responses to my OP in july was partly due to the suggestion that
parobala could be the "libre manjaro" rather than "archlinux-libre"
which may have dissuaded interest in development in this
"user-friendliness" area

it does however some harm to provide a supposedly user-friendly
installer that is actually broken - this leads non-technical people to
conclude that even the "easy way" to install parabola is complicated


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On 09/03/2017 11:34 AM, Andreas Grapentin wrote:
> We could consider adding a small note that links to the
> last release, but I would give prominence to the new isos.

sure but as you know, in the case of the existing mate ISO, that note
would need to provide more than a little detail to overcome it's
shortcomings - i would like to see the links on wiki page simply
pointing to PHP redirect pages for each ISO and signature rather than
manually hard-coding new URLs for each new release - e.g.
https://repomirror.parabola.nu/iso/latest-cli.iso.php could be written
once to always redirect to the latest CLI release as signified by the
date present in the ISO filenames - likewise, a link to the entire
https://repomirror.parabola.nu/iso/ directory could be hard-coded into
the wiki in order to at once and for all provide access to old releases


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On 09/03/2017 11:34 AM, Andreas Grapentin wrote:
> The meat of releasing a new iso lies in editing this page:
> https://wiki.parabola.nu/Get_Parabola

yes but i mentioned it specifically because as i recall, that wiki page
requires admin access


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On 09/06/2017 12:01 AM, Isaac David wrote:
> if Parabola
> is going to keep offering a graphical installer it better is a
> properly-maintained one. the kind of users who can work around the
> issues with the current image probably use the CLI installer anyway.

that is exactly why andreas and i started in this direction back in may
when the current ISOs were about 6 months old - but the problems they
exhibited had existed already for some months before that - the decision
whether to fix, replace, or remove the mate ISO is long overdue now


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On 09/06/2017 12:01 AM, Isaac David wrote:
> how far are you into building the new ISO?

i described in great detail the precise problems with the existing mate
ISO, the regression problems we had upgrading it,
the current progress, and possible future plans in this post -->
https://lists.parabola.nu/pipermail/dev/2017-July/005685.html - the
short answer is that it currently boots into a default LXDE desktop
session as the un-privileged 'parabola' user and includes the
zenity-based mate install script from the mate ISO - this is enough for
an evaluation alpha release and at least one user has built it and
confirmed it is viable as an installer and rescue system - the known
remaining steps before a production release are to set a nicer looking
desktop theme (perhaps to simply re-integrate the previous mate theme)
and to include the calamares installer, which itself is working but only
about ~90% "finished" as it too currently install a mate environment


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On 09/06/2017 12:01 AM, Isaac David wrote:
> bill-auger said:
> > i would like to be able to build the ISOs on the server where
> > they would be hosted rather than building locally and uploading
>
> sounds plausible... using your personal winston account then moving
> things to their final destination with repo. or maybe using repo all
> along, with care

On 09/09/2017 01:46 PM, Andreas Grapentin wrote:
> Maybe I could look into providing access to a iso build server

it is not so much that i need power for this but more that it is just
good practice to have a dedicated "clean" build server on which to
prepare binaries for distribution (at least until the day when binary
reproducibility is the norm) - but it also lends to the possibility of
automated triggering (via git push to parabolaiso for example) build ->
test/verify -> publish - but this is not at all imperative for now - as
of today parabolaiso itself would need some more work in order to allow
it to build as an un-privileged user

i was mostly curious about the typical packaging workflow and how the
servers are configured to accommodate packaging (e.g. are packages
routinely built on a dedicated server or build farm? how automated the
process?) - for example, if packages are or can be built on the same box
that hosts the main repos and ISO then the duration of an ISO re-build
task would be significantly reduced as all of the packages necessary to
build the entire set of ISOs would be available locally

from what i understand now, the canonical location of the binary
packages and ISOs are on the winston server to which interested mirrors
synchronize themselves - the repo at winston.parabola.nu account is
privileged and could be used to install build deps if needed or even
build the ISOs "in place"; but ideally it would be better if parabolaiso
itself could be modified to not require privileged access and to only
use the privileged account to move the final artifact to the www directory

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