Hi,
You'll find the notes of developer meeting at 28-02-2009 Ankara/Turkey. Thanks
to Necmettin Begiter for translation.
Here are the outcomes of the Pardus developers' meeting held within BİLMÖK
(Bilgisayar Mühendisliği Öğrencileri Kongresi -), on February 28th, 2009:
Agenda Item 1: Pardus Developers' Bulletin
A developer bulletin will be prepared, based on the skeleton of KDE Commit
Digest. Details are as follows:
# The bulletin will be monthly.
# Code mentioned in the bulletin will not be detailed.
# If necessary, screenshots will be included.
# As following the commit lists require a lot of work, the bulletin will be
gathered by 3 or 4 Özgürlükİçin community members, lead by a Pardus
developer, Gökçen Eraslan, as an editor.
Agenda Item 2: HCI Works
Işıl Poyraz has reported the following regarding the HCI (Human-Computer
Interaction) studies held by Yıldız Teknik University:
# Pardus has a pretty wide user base. In order to provide Pardus users' with
applications better in terms of HCI, Pardus applications' interfaces' HCI
will be help by YTU Department of Interactive Media Design. Initial studies
has started on TASMA and the Milky iconset. Bi-weekly reports on usability
tests held with users of different profiles are prepared. After an analysis
held by an expert regarding these tests, a report of wider coverage will be
prepared.
# Milky iconset is assessed to be a very "original" and innovative. Milky
designer Banu and YTÜ has had a meeting and the outcome of the tests are put
into the mentioned iconset.
# A design guide for Pardus technologies will be published, but it will
probably be after the release of Pardus 2009. Among the objectives is the
possibility of this process to effect the KDE project.
Agenda Item 3: For the Contributors
Talks on what development-related technologies the contributors can be
provided with have ended as listed:
# A developer-announce mailing list will be created and important news,
events, changes and subjects, together with the developer bulletin, will be
published here.
# An FTP space containing the source code archives repository, as employed for
the Devel and 2008 repositories, will be created also for the Contrib
repository.
# Contributors will be given alias email addresses under
developer.pardus.org.tr.
# Two possibilities on providing developers with a virtual machine to help
with package compile processes were talked on. For an assessment of who needs
which alternative and a conclusion, the options will be discussed in the
developer email list. The conclusive options has been:
## A virtual machine where developers can login, or,
## A system that reports errors after a package compilation built on a clean
system.
Agenda Item 4: Version Life Cycle
# Having a document describing how to and/or a script to update to the
upcoming version is decided as a pre-condition for a new release.
# If an upgrade script can be written or not will be announced prior to the
upcoming version. Semen Cirit volunteered to write the script.
# It has been mentioned that for an easier upgrade to newer versions, /home
can be mounted as a seperate partition with LVM support when automatic
install is chosen. Though, as LVM is not yet fully supported, a decision
could not be made on this issue, which means this item will be re-discussed.
# After a question, Ekin Meroğlu stated that there are no certain dates for
sub-versions, but generally "total updates half the size of a CD" is
applicable.
# On the issue of "kill"ing a version, a general calendar was stated as
follows: Updates regarding errors in applications will be published for a
certain amount of time, and after that is done, only security updates will be
published for 2 months for that version. On the other hand, if somebody
volunteers to continue that version, its support will be handed over to that
person.
# It was also noted that a corporate version based on Pardus 2008 will be made
available before the "death" of Pardus 2008, and that the mentioned version
may contain changes breaking API or ABI.
Agenda Item 5: Migration Tool
# Muray Ongan, Migration Tool's maintainer, has mentioned that he will not be
able to maintain it anymore, and that he will send an email to the developers
list regarding who want to keep up the work.
# Also noted that Migration Tools needed to be bug-fixed and ported to KDE 4.
Agenda Item 6: Project Management
Regarding the management processes, project manager Erkan Tekman noted the
following:
# DPT has approved resource allocation to the Pardus project (which was
financed only through TÜBİTAK UEKAE's own resources until now). With the
financial resources allocated by DPT, reaching a team size of 40
professionals within 3 years is planned.
# For the DPT project, an observer committee will be established and a
voluntary developer will also be part of the committee. Yet, the
question "Who is a developer?" must be answered first.
# A contract between UEKAE and each developer is wished for. With this
contract, how TÜBİTAK sees a developer, and the rights and responsibilities
of developers will be determined. Developers' preparing the contract is
preferred, but if that doesn't happen, project management will have to write
the contract.
# The first item to be included in the contract is the GPL licensing of
developers' commits to the project. Attorney Akın Ömeroğlu stated that it is
obligatory to have a developer contract to protect developers' rights in
terms of Turkish laws.
# Project Manager also noted a wish for an easy-to-use solution that would
help removing every trademarked logo out of the Pardus distribution.
Agenda Item 7: Pardus 2009 and Repositories
# A Pardus tour consisting of 7 or 8 HTML pages and screenshots, prepared by
the Özgürlükİçin community, totaling up to 1.5 MBs will be presented with
Kaptan, offline if the installation disc gets to have enough space, online
otherwise.
# Also by the Özgürlükİçin community, a "Hello Pardus" version of KDE-Look
will be prepared, and "Get Hot New Stuff" icons will be prepared (Kubilay
Kocabalkan will be responsible for this last item).
# Through a parameter passed to YALI, Pardus will have an option to install
system.base component packages only.
# Mudur will have supporting for updating syslog and will support various log
servers, especially Rsyslog.
# Works on a DVD version of Pardus are postponed to after the release of
Pardus 2009.
# A through comparison of media players will be held by developers and will be
discussed in the developers list for Pardus 2009.
# Popular demand was noted on containing and displaying messages in packages.
Yet, caused by the managerial difficulties of displaying messages, the final
decision was to be able to included 2 <Info> tags, one under <Package> and
one under <Update>. Packages with either of these <Info> tags will have an
[Info] button in installation and/or prior to update, and the text included
under these tags can be displayed in a web page.
# A kernel module interface can be included with the System-Manager
application.
# As noted in the developers list beforehand, virtual package support for
Java, SendMail and Kernel was stressed to be crucial.
# Uğut Tutar mentioned that his graduation project was an OCR application for
Turkish language. That the project would not be usable by Pardus 2009's
release and that it might be possible to publish the application with Pardus
2009.1 were predicted.
# Also noted was that Smolt packages were "almost" ready and that the main
Smolt server can be used to store and display data.
# Mete Alpaslan was told to be writing backends for LVM and cripto support,
and he has volunteered writing YALI's support modules on the subject. Onur
Küçük had written mkinitramfs support on the subject.
# A proposal on creating a configuration file for the kernel parameters in the
boot process was also given.
# A release schedule could not be put forth at the developers meeting.
# A Live+Install CD was stated to be not possible because of space problems
but that it will well be possible to do that on a DVD.
Agenda Item 8: Repository Policies
# It came forth that a policy must be decided and put into action concerning
which repository each package must go. The decision was to discuss this
subject on the developers list; and the final decision on the matter will be
made by Ekin Meroğlu, Ozan Çağlayan, and Onur Küçük.
# As some packages may be moved to the Contrib repository in the process of
moving from Pardus 2008 to 2009, user must be informed and if necessary must
be made to add the contrib repository to the list of repositories within the
update script.
# In discussion on repository options, three possibilities were given, yet no
conclusive statement could be made:
## Creating a bigger repository, containin both the Contrib and Stable
repositories,
## Moving certain packages to the Contrib repository, thus creating a smaller
Stable and a bigger Contrib repository,
## Moving certain packages to the Stable repository, thus creating a bigger
Stable and a smaller Contrib repository,
Doruk Fişek proposed the following on how to place packages:
## Pardus tools, system.devel, kde4.base, and the packages that come
preinstalled with the CD,
## Packages with dependencies and special packages,
## Only packages that effect themselves.
--
Serbülent
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Good to see that there are already 7 members, and some nice pictures 
