[elrepo-devel] Join the ELRepo contributors community

[Phil Perry]

Nikolay Ulyanitsky wrote:
> Hello
> 
> My name is Nikolay Ulyanitsky.
> I want to contribute some packages on ELRepo.
> I have experience in building RPM packages and distributions based on
> Fedora and RHEL.
> I am not a contributor of Fedora but want to become EPEL contributor in future.
> 

Hi Nikolay,

I've seen some of your work on redhat-club.org :)

You are the first person who has really asked to contribute, and that's 
great as we *really do want community contributors*. But as you're the 
first, it means we don't have any procedures in place to allow it to 
happen so now is the time for us to start work on that and make it happen.

At the very least we need to publish some guidelines for contributors to 
describe how we currently build packages for elrepo (we don't currently 
use mock). We also have build hosts available and can discuss granting 
access to build accounts on those servers. Only the founders of elrepo 
currently have access to the gpg key for signing packages and that's 
unlikely to change IMHO, but I see no reason trusted contributors cannot 
have access to everything else. Lets see what the others have to say on 
these issues. Steve maintains the build host infrastructure so he may 
have some thoughts on granting build access to those servers.

> I have prepared following packages for review:
> 1. nx1001
> This package provides the nx1001 kernel module for the
> ASUS NX1001 PCI Fast Ethernet Network Adapter.
> 

Sounds great - we have quite a few nic drivers so that will fit right in.

> 2. sis190
> This package provides the sis190 kernel module for the
> SiS 191/190 PCI Gigabit/Fast Ethernet Adapter.
> Additional information:
> * Official driver from SiS.
> * Tested on real hardware with CentOS 5.3 i386 - works just fine.
> * Backported sis190-kmod-1.3-1.el5.elrepo is buggy - kernel panic on
> module loading.
> 

Great. I backported the current elrepo driver from kernel-2.6.31-rc5 but 
if your version is better then I'm more than happy to switch to your driver.

> 3. wl
> This package provides the wl kernel module with Broadcom's IEEE
> 802.11a/b/g/n hybrid Linux device driver for use with Broadcom's
> BCM4311, BCM4312, BCM4321, and BCM4322-based hardware.
> 

This one is tricky. I looked at packaging it (easy enough to do), but 
the licence terms are very restrictive for re-distribution and elrepo is 
not in a position to accept liability for Broadcom against prosecution. 
We have sought legal advice from the Software Freedom Law Centre and 
decided it is not possible for us to redistribute this driver under the 
current Broadcom terms. Shame.

As a result, we need to carefully review the licence terms of any 
non-GPL software on a case by case basis before putting it into elrepo.

> 4. gspca
> This package provides the gspca video for linux (v4l1) driver, providing
> support for webcams and digital cameras based on the  range of chips
> manufactured by SunPlus Sonix Z-star Vimicro Conexant Etoms Transvision
> Mars-Semi Pixart Gspca have a strong history. The project born with spca50x
> for Sunplus chipset become spca5xx to support a large range of chipset,
> and is now set as gspca. GSPCA mean "Generic Software Package for Camera
> Adaptator".
> 

We currently have kmod-video4linux which includes the gspca driver since 
it was merged into the V4L-DVB tree. We decided it was easier to just 
build and package the whole tree rather than cherry picking individual 
drivers and their dependencies (I had initially packaged just uvcvideo 
as this is what *I* needed). It causes issues whichever way you approach 
it due to dependencies.

> 5. sdricoh_cs
> This package provides the sdricoh_cs kernel module for the
> Secure Digital and MMC Card Readers that can be found in some notebooks
> like the Samsung P35.
> The real chip name is R5C593. The device seems to be combined with a
> Cardbus bridge and a Firewire Controller. The MMC Cardreader emulates a
> RL5c476 cardbus bridge.
> 

Not sure if Alan has done some work in this area, so I'll leave it for 
him to comment here.

> 6. xorg-x11-drv-sis-intel
> This package include Xorg X11 sis video driver provided by Intel.
> Additional information:
> * Tested on real hardware with CentOS 5.3 i386 - works just fine on
>   one notebook where original xorg-x11-drv-sis doesn't.
> 

OK, sounds good.

> 
> Precompiled packages available:
>  * SRPMS:  http://repo.lystor.org.ua/el/5/SRPMS/
>  * i386:        http://repo.lystor.org.ua/el/5/i386/
>  * x86_64:  http://repo.lystor.org.ua/el/5/x86_64/
> 
> Packages were builded by mock on fully updated CentOS 5.4 with kernel
> 2.6.18-164.6.1.el5.
> 
> Can I contribute to ELRepo? :)
> 

Yes :)

We just really need to work out how you do that in practice. I would 
like to see you build and maintain your own packages within elrepo (and 
one of the key holders can sign and push packages for you). How does 
that sound?

I hope this is a positive enough response in the first instance, and 
lets start working through the things we need to get in place.

Regards,

Phil