Arch Linux in April 2023 #

project management #

We’ve create a GitLab Board to track all tasks related to project management and project leadership. This Board allows us to visualize the exact state of tasks using different lanes and labels, making it easier to keep track of ongoing progress. Additionally, tasks will receive comments and lane updates to reflect the latest developments. This is another step towards providing increased transparency, structure, and visibility for our staff and users alike.

The Board will continuously include an issue for next month’s monthly report pad, streamlining the process for staff to add noteworthy bulletpoints about their progress.

RFC #

We proposed and accepted an RFC to change our packaging build flags from _FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 to _FORTIFY_SOURCE=3 for better fortification coverage. Once rolled out, this change provides enhanced buffer size detection and improves the overall fortification coverage. You can find more details about this RFC on GitLab. By making this change, we will be able to further strengthen the security of our distro and better protect our users.

infrastructure #

We’ve set up an official crates.io service account and assigned ownership of relevant projects such as various alpm and arch-audit related crates. This allows us to better manage and control access. In the future we will be able to use this service account to extend release automation via GitLab.

Python #

This month we’ve focused on the Python ecosystem and have successfully upgraded the Python interpreter and relevant packages to version 3.11. As part of this process, we’ve rebuilt all packages that were dependent on Python and have fixed numerous issues in the process. We’re pleased to report that we’ve completed these upgrades by the end of April and have since moved all relevant packages over to our binary repositories.

Docker #

We applied and were accepted into the Docker-Sponsored Open Source Program with our Arch Linux organization. In addition to the monthly updated Docker Official Images, being part of this program provides us with several benefits for the images distributed through our organization. One of the key benefits is that users pulling public images from our project namespace will receive access to unlimited pulls and unlimited egress.