Monday, November 27, 2017

Internationalization (i18n) Fedora activity days (FAD) 2017 at Pune, India

FAD 1st day (20th Nov, 2017)

This was the second i18n FAD with earlier one in Nov 2015 (G11n FAD). With the earlier experience of organizing FAD, we spent a good amount of time in planning and making this successful. This time intentionally kept it only for i18n to make it more focused. Thanks to Fedora council for approving budget, it was not only budget approval but further help from Bex for booking air tickets as well.

Participants for this FAD were from Poland, Germany, Tokyo, Beijing and India. This time good part was having more members with interest in QA (FLTG).  This blog is specifically about my contribution into FAD activities. May be will have specific blog on communityblog to cover whole FAD achievements.

1st Day

  • On first day welcome all to the FAD (with Jens) 
  • Given quick session about fonts testing automation, present state and what can we do during this FAD.
  • Filipino language support
    • This was request on pagure g11n to check whether we can begin Filipino language translations. I worked on it with Rafal and also Mike helped to it. We already have nice documentation about language support. 
    • Only thing remaining was adding support in system-config-language. Reported on upstream with patch.
    • This was really interesting for me, after almost 7 years referred it. This task initiated interesting discussion as follows:
      • What is use of comps langauge group?  We introduced langpacks to get rid of comps group though we still cant pull IME's and Fonts with langpacks.
      • Discussion with Parag, Jens, Tagoh and Me. 
      • Options we have is to have Weak dependencies, DNF groups.  But again questions Jens raised do we need it in modularity. We postponed this to Modularity session discussions.

2st Day

  • Font automation testing
    Had good discussion with Tagoh and he suggested some alternative, one thing popped out during discussion is present Auto test module in Lohit is very minimal and we can extend it further. Jens suggested why package level testing? and not Fedora level all fonts testing?

    https://github.com/pravins/fonts-automated-testing and completed it for SourceHanSansCN-Regular.otf, will gradually add other fonts into it.


3rd Day

  • FAD L10N 2018
    This discussion started during Flock 2017 and Rafal shown interest in hosting it. Not got much time but came to conclusion good to have it aligned with either DevConf.cz or flock 2018. Will do further discussion on l10n mailing list.

  • Modularity discussions
    Gone through modularity packaging guideline, this was led by Jens and he put lots of time into it.

  • Fedora 27 release party
    Before FAD i was not sure, whether we will able to do it or not. We discussed and decided to do it during FAD lunch time, it was really good experience to celebrate Fedora release after long time. Points discussed were, to start Fedora meetup again, discussions on packaging, few members shows interest to become Ambassadors and conduct meetups.

Fedora 27 release party, Pune, India


    I was happy we able to do it, though not very well planned from my side.

While concluding

Had pretty busy FAD. FAD is always great experience to have all active contributors under same roof, productivity is much more and off course how can we forget the fun part :)

Bowling at Amanora mall, Pune, India


Though in 3 days we did not able to complete all planned activities but we planned activities for the next whole year. Looking forward from all to complete post-FAD activities. !!

Monday, September 18, 2017

Flock 2017: How to make your application into a Flatpak?


"How to make your application into a Flatpak?" was on the first day and delivered by Owen Taylor.

Its around 1 and half year we are observing development of Flatpak's and i am sure this is going to be one of the breakthrough technology for distribution of packages in coming years.  I attended this topic to get more idea about what is happening? and What plan in coming future?

Session was very information and it was mostly from architectural overview of flatpak. 

I will update my blog with recording once it get available. Meanwhile in this blog i am going to cover only Q&A part from session.

Question: If i install normal rpm and flatpak for same application, how system will differentiate between it?
Answer: In command like, application id will be different for one from rpm and one from flatpak. Both will appear and one can choose.

Question: Flatpak is bundle of libraries. Now if Platform like Fedora provide one flatpak for application and same time upstream also provide flatpak. Will one get replaced with other?
Answer: We cant replace one with other.

Question: I created flatpak on F25 and failed in Wayland, some permission missing.
Answer: If it is build for X11, it should work on wayland as well.

Question: Can we test flatpak on F26?
Answer: flatpak.org are there, we can download and start testing. F26 is very much updated.

Question: Are we releasing any application as a flatpak only in Fedora in future?
Answer: Lets packager decide it, if its working well.  At least we are not doing this forfor F27, F28. Fedora 29 packages may able to do it.

Question: Whe we will have Firefox, Libreoffice as a flatpak?
Answer: Low hanging fruits first and gradually we can think or ask people for it. First lets get infra ready.

Question: Is any dependency on kernel?
Answer: Generally very minimal dependency on kernel, more for graphics driver. No, strong dependency between kernel and runtime.

Question: Can you consider flatpak with similar tech in android etc?
Answer: Idea of using specific file system is purely flatpak and docker/containers.   Flatpak has more secured communication model.


I hope, i able to catch all the Q&A correctly, if anyone has to update anything about this feel free to send me email or just update in comment section.