So you want to get started packaging?

ReillyBrogan

First of all Serpent is still very much in the early bringup phase. We're still building the core systems that most people generally take for granted on Linux distributions. I figured people may want to start contributing though, so here's a wishlist of packages that you can package if you want. We're going to package all of these either way when we arrive at the need for them, but if you were to get them out of the way now it would help speed us up while we continue to build. This list will be updated as we think of more packages or if they are packaged.

Filesystem utilities:

~~btrf-progs~~
~~f2fs-tools~~
~~xfs-progs~~
~~dosfstools~~

Other stuff:

~~dnsutils~~
gnupg (signing commits)
~~htop~~
iotop
~~json-c~~
libgcrypt
~~libpciaccess~~
~~libxslt~~
libboost
~~valgrind~~
~~pciutils~~
python-pytest (good luck)
rust
sccache
xmlto
libnvme
nvme-cli
swtpm
tpm2-tss
libtpms

ReillyBrogan

There's also a bunch of packages in main that could use a cleanup. Take a look at some of the packages that haven't been touched in months and compare them to what we've been working on recently. You should get a gist of the changes that the older packages need.

There are also a bunch of TODOs scattered throughout the repo if you wanted to take a stab at one or more of them.

16CharactersWork

What are we using to track the progress of packages? Do I need to put it in the forum page?

ReillyBrogan

16CharactersWork if you're submitting a cleanup or update for an existing package in main just do a PR for it. If you intend to take a package from the above list I think it would be better to mention here that you're going to take it so nobody wastes time packaging the same thing (within reason, if someone says they're taking a package but doesn't submit a PR within a few days I would say it goes up for grabs again).

You can post any questions/issues with packaging here on the forums or for more interactive help most of the development is being coordinated through the Matrix channels and you can ask there.

Botanium

I would love to participate in building packages. I might need some help till I set up the machine. Really excited about getting the final ISO up and ready.

ReillyBrogan

Botanium There's onboarding to help you build the Serpent tooling and from there you can use it to provision a rootfs. You can launch a systemd-nspawn container from that or use my virtiofs guide to launch a VM. The point being that if you wanted to get started now you could, it's going to be a bit before we have a ISO with a GUI that you could use to develop from within serpentos itself and we could still use all the help we can get now. Feel free to hop onto Matrix to ask for assistance if you're not already on it!

Botanium

ReillyBrogan thanks a lot. I will start preparing my machine. Now that we have an ISO, shall we try that to prepare the packaging environment?

ReillyBrogan

Botanium The ISO isn't currently installable AFAIK. We need to integrate something like Calamares as well as a boot manager (like clr-boot-manager, but NOT clr-boot-manager).

Currently, the best way to get started packaging is to start off with the guide here.

Botanium

Are we going to have the list updated? as we are in March 2023?

ReillyBrogan

Botanium At this point we're packaging things so fast it's hard to have a have a list of package suggestions when it's probably going to be out of date as soon as it's written. Your best bet is to hop on Matrix and ask in person for suggestions on what to package.