Winter 2010 SBR600 Weekly Schedule

Please note:

• The schedule here is tentative.
• Week-by-week details will be filled in as the course progresses.

Week 1 (January 11) - Introduction

Tuesday

• Welcome
• Introductions
• Intro to Build & Release
  • Brief overview of the process
    • Versioning & repository systems
    • Compilation
    • Testing
    • Packaging
    • Compositing
    • Release
    • Distribution
    • Mirroring
  • These steps vary according to the particular project/product. For example, when distributing software physically, "Release" means performing a RTM, where the final "gold disk" is sent to the duplicating house to be mass-produced; but when distributing software electronically, "Release" means sending the software to the online distribution system. The sequence of steps also varies between projects/products.
• Course Layout
  • Project-based course
  • Working with Open Source
  • Working with the Fedora Project
• Communication Tools
• Course Outline
• Visit the CDOT Area

Friday

• Make
• Makefile Basics
  • Targets, Dependencies, and Commands
  • Implied rules (e.g., .o files)
  • Examples
• Building software from a source tarball using a makefile

Readings/Resources

• Two simple makefile examples

ToDo

Communication Lab: By Friday, January 15, Set up your accounts (wiki, IRC, FAS2).

• Create a blog post which will appear on the OpenSource@Seneca Planet, containing:
  • A portion of an IRC conversation you've had with someone on a Fedora or Seneca IRC channel.
  • A link to your User page on the Seneca wikis
  • A link to your User page on the Fedora wiki
  • Note: don't just dump this stuff in a blog post, add some introductory text as well!
• Add an entry to the Winter 2010 SBR600 Participants page

Lab 1: By Tuesday, January 19:

• Build 2 packages from Source
  • The NLED editor from http://cdot.senecac.on.ca
  • Any package that uses a configure script -- SourceForge might be a good place to look for such packages.
• Blog about the experience.

Week 2 (January 18) - RPM Packages I

Wednesday

• Discussion of issues related to building
  • Finding dependencies.
  • -jX flag to enable multiple jobs

RPM Packages

• Purpose
• What's in an RPM package file
  • Metadata
    • What the package provides
    • Dependencies
    • Packager, date, license, summary, description, ...
  • Digital signature
  • Software
  • Data
    • Fonts
    • Icons
    • Sample data
  • Documentation
  • Configuration files
  • Setup scripts
    • Pre-install
    • Post-install
    • Pre-uninstall
    • Post-uninstall
    • Triggers

The RPM Database

• Purpose of the database
• Querying the RPM database
  • rpm -q

ToDo

• Finish tasks from week 1 if not already completed.
  • Remember, marking in this course is done on the basis of blog posts which appear on the planet.
  • You should have two blog posts on the planet by now: One with a link to your Seneca and Fedora user pages plus a snippet of IRC conversation, and one with a reflection on your experience compiling software from source code.

• Find out what -j value results in the fastest build time for the software you have chosen. Blog about your results.

• Listen to the audio recording of last semester's conference call with Jesse Keating, Fedora Release Engineer