New Fedora Core Tree

[Mike Barnes]

In about 24 hours, the FC2 tree on the ftp.maths.monash.edu.au server
will be replaced with a slightly tighter version that's been sitting
on my development machine for far too long. There have been a couple
of issues I've considered "blockers" but I'm getting it out, since I'm
really busy right now and hardly have the time to hack at this these
days. I hope someone else can take this and run with it.

This version hasn't sat and evolved in place like the one there
currently. This is a set of packages that were all recompiled under
the new system itself, not in an environment that was part RedHat 7.2
and part Fedora and changing rapidly. It's quite a bit more stable.
Quite a few patches have been worked in to various packages.

There's bad news, though. Quite a lot of the packages have the same
version and release numbers as the last tree. That's because I really
just got a copy of the FC2 SRPM directory and ran through it a package
at a time doing rebuilds. If you've install the previous test system,
boy will you be in for some fun. :)

There's still no actual installer. I've got some more digging at
Anaconda to do, but once I've got the new tree (all 3.5 gig of it) on
the server, I'll be able to rsync my local changes easily again. If
anyone's got any great tips on how to most effectively do a manual
upgrade to the point where Yum works, please post it now.

Almost all of the packages in the distribution are now signed. They
key's on pgp.mit.edu. Fingerprint is below:
pub  1024D/24217BD0 2004-06-17 Mike Barnes (RPM Builds) <mike at grouse.net.au>
     Key fingerprint = 95CC 5246 A2FC BB45 8BEC  844E E069 4F6A 2421 7BD0
sub  1024g/C001B755 2004-06-17

Notice I said _almost_ all the packages are signed. The unsigned ones
are ones that, while they built at some point, do not currently
rebuild. It's a handy way of generating a to-do list

Also, the only packages that have been modified from the FC2
distribution SRPMS all have an "icbinu" and number appended to the
release number. I'll certainly get the SRPMs for these up as quick as
possible. There aren't as many as I'd expected to see, and a couple of
those are no longer necessary now we've straightened out some bugs in
the toolchain.

Fingers crossed, and don't go starting any installations from what's
there in the next day or so.

Thanks folks.