Arch Linux in January 2023 #

Git packaging sources #

We have announced the state of the art of the Git packaging migration to arch-dev-public including a first item on our distro roadmap to track the remaining effort.

We have prepared most of the necessary settings, configurations and the corresponding machine for the new test environment for the Git package workflow. The test phase is expected to start at the beginning of February.

base-devel #

We have implemented the base-devel and multilib-devel meta-package orthogonal to our already existing base meta-package. This change may require manual intervention. Lately we added debugedit to base-devel in order to provide debug packages via makepkg. This lead to a couple of followup issues with installations missing the new package as changes in a package group are not automatically reflected on system upgrades.

RFC #

We are formalizing an RFC to increase _FORTIFY_SOURCE level to 3 in our default build flags. For a long time, we have been using -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 to detect C memory management problems at build time. Recently, glibc (2.34) added _FORTIFY_SOURCE=3 to add extra checking. This has been supported in clang for some time, and is now available in GCC with the release of version 12. The gains are enhanced buffer size detection and better fortification coverage.

Staff #

We would like to welcome Robin Candau (Antiz) among the Arch Linux Package Maintainers.

Due to extended inactivity, Kyle Keen (keenerd) has been removed from the Arch Linux Package Maintainers. We would like to express our gratitude to Kyle for many years of packaging work.