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Dell Linux community repository beta - software repository update

There was a message from Michael Brown on the Dell PowerEdge mailing list, that I thought is important enough to repeat here as many people may not know about that list.

Dell has an active OpenManage infra setup for Linux to help monitor and manage their hardware. As we have their 2950s, I'm monitoring that list.

"After several months of work, I am ready to announce a bèta period for the Dell Community Linux repository at http://linux.dell.com/repo/community. When complete, this repository will be the replacement for the current software repository. Please read the details on the repository homepage.

I will be running a two week beta period to ensure that the repository is functioning properly. After two weeks, I will redirect software repo bootstrap so that new installs will use the community repo. And two weeks after that, I will redirect all current software repo users to the community repository.

Early this year I asked the community if people would be willing to submit RPMs to the Dell repository for things that would enhance Dell systems. There was a pretty good response from that query, but the problem was that we were not in a position to accept these contributions. The community repository is the answer for this. With this new repository, we will be able to accept outside contributions and enable community involvement around the sorts of things that enhance Dell systems.

OpenSUSE Build Service:

The new community repository is built using the OpenSUSE Build Service. The Dell repository is using the build service project isv:dell:community. After the beta period for the repository is over, we will be allowing external contributions by using the security features available in the Build Service. Please follow the links on the repository welcome page to see the process for contributing.

Why the name change:

The 'software' repository was the first repository that we set up, over 5 years ago. Little did we know that it would be popular and that we would have the need for other repositories (the firmware and hardware repos, for example), and the name was a bit unfortunate. We feel that the name "Community Repository" will more accurately reflect the content of this specific repository.

What is in the repository:

The goal is to get all of the open source software that Dell distributes into this repository. Things like DKMS, libsmbios, etc, are in this repository. In the future, we expect that community contributions will become a major part of the repository as well. It is our hope that things like Nagios and OpenNMS plugins for Dell systems are contributed.

Other Benefits of the Build Service:

Using the OpenSUSE Build service, we are able to support a very wide variety of distributions, much wider than my previous homegrown build system, and with far less administration as well. We now support Fedora and OpenSUSE, with Ubuntu and Debian support on the way. The Build Service project is enabled for Ubuntu builds, but no packages currently have the proper build service enabling files. This will come in time."

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