Hi all, This is another status update on GNOME on Baserock (gnome-system-x86_64). It took a little longer than expected, as gdm has been up and running for some time, however enabling graphical boot by default would have left you in a situation where you are locked into the desktop with no terminal, or worse, you would just not have any user to get through gdm's login screen. So, instead I postponed this update until there was a pretty functional user experience. At this point, assuming that the fix-samba-build[0] and gnome-control-center[1] branches have landed in definitions by the time you are reading this, you should get a pretty user friendly experience when booting the image. Initial Setup ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ When booting the image for the first time, you will automatically boot into the GNOME Initial Setup user experience[2], where you will choose a system language, keyboard layout, privacy settings, setup some online accounts and finally create a username and password. Without any effort on my part, the final splash screen when completing the initial setup will say "Welcome to Baserock" with a nice fat button which says "Start using Baserock", or, it will say something else if you have not selected an English locale, or course. Currently the only noticeable problems with the initial setup are with the online accounts; the icons (for google, facebook, owncloud, etc) seem to have gone missing in the last build; and when trying to create a google or facebook online account, you will get a message about an unacceptable TLS certificate, some more integration-foo is needed in that area. After Logging In ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Once you log in, you will have a "quite" usable GNOME Shell UX. The shell seems to respond well and nothing seems to be missing after a few passes. When browsing your installed applications, you will have access to "Terminal" (gnome-terminal), and from there you can simply type "su -". The user created by the initial setup tool is not a sudoer, but for now we still have a passwordless root account, you can just give it a password and ssh into your box in the normal way afterwards, or do anything you want to your system from there. You have your basic graphical file browsing experience provided by nautilus which works nicely and GNOME Control Center is also installed, so you don't have any useless buttons provided by the GNOME Shell: everything exposed by the shell does something. Asides from some missing icons in the control center, it seems to behave quite well also, you can go ahead and set your wallpaper and lock screen backgrounds without issue, also it withstands a language change quite well (telling you that you need to restart the session for the change to take effect - gdm's login screen wont update it's language until the next boot but I suspect that is an upstream issue). Next Steps ~~~~~~~~~~ What we see with the GNOME system so far seems to work well but requires more testing - there are issues with online accounts and the journal shows that geoclue lacks permission to access some services. I was unable to test with internet access from the VM so far but I suspect that the Initial Setup would be able to guess my location automatically. I would like to iron out the kinks with the currently installed basics before continuing to installing applications. As more GNOME components get integrated properly, we gain momentum and integrating the higher level bits gets easier as they receive a more GNOME friendly environment to run in. We should soon also be ready to pursue CI and automatic production of a "Live CD", but I would really appreciate some feedback on this front, as nobody has replied yet to my last email on that subject[3]. Stay tuned for the next episode of GNOME on Baserock, which should have the remaining integration kinks ironed out and add a new stratum with GNOME applications. Best, -Tristan [0]:https://gerrit.baserock.org/#/q/topic:fix-samba-build [1]:https://gerrit.baserock.org/#/q/topic:gnome-control-center [2]:https://wiki.gnome.org/Design/OS/InitialSetup [3]:http://listmaster.pepperfish.net/pipermail/baserock-dev-baserock.org/2... _______________________________________________ baserock-dev mailing list baserock-dev(a)baserock.org http://listmaster.pepperfish.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/baserock-dev-ba...

On Fri, 2015-10-30 at 11:55 +0000, Agustin Benito Bethencourt wrote: > Hi, > > do you have any estimation of the required effort to keep the > Baserock-GNOME image up to date (maintenance)? > Good question. This depends on a few factors: o If we have CI running regularly, and how good that CI is (does it run installed tests ?) o How much software goes into that, the basic GNOME applications is my guess o How dynamic is the underlying platform, are we integrating new versions of GNOME on a reasonably stable platform ? or are we allowing Baserock committers to upgrade lower level packages without validating that those changes do not break the GNOME UX ? Assuming that our CI is not great, but that the underlying platform is stable (i.e. other Baserock contributors have ensured that upgrading samba does not cause problems building and running GNOME), and that the work is really isolated to changes within GNOME - then the churn within GNOME and it's own 6 month release cycle is not much to handle. I would hazard a guess that a micro point release update of an already stable GNOME (say GNOME 3.18.0 -> GNOME 3.18.1) is trivial and can be sorted out in a day, maybe two. More if we expect to perform some validation and testing. Preparations for a new GNOME release is also relatively easy (again assuming the underlying platform is _stable_) and should be achievable inside one week, assuming we perform some simple validation. Two or three weeks is more realistic if the underlying Baserock platform is highly unstable.

In this second scenario, it's hard to say whether continuous integration will help or not - it's possible that unstable APIs will produce non-functional builds and then later builds will fix themselves all by themselves while other GNOME modules adapt to API changes. I would advise at least to postpone any manual validation and integration until the last moment when a release candidate is close at hand.

Best, -Tristan > On 30/10/15 06:52, Tristan Van Berkom wrote: >> Hi all, >> >> This is another status update on GNOME on Baserock >> (gnome-system-x86_64). It took a little longer than expected, as gdm has >> been up and running for some time, however enabling graphical boot by >> default would have left you in a situation where you are locked into the >> desktop with no terminal, or worse, you would just not have any user to >> get through gdm's login screen. >> >> So, instead I postponed this update until there was a pretty functional >> user experience. >> >> At this point, assuming that the fix-samba-build[0] and >> gnome-control-center[1] branches have landed in definitions by the time >> you are reading this, you should get a pretty user friendly experience >> when booting the image. >> >> >> Initial Setup >> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >> When booting the image for the first time, you will automatically boot >> into the GNOME Initial Setup user experience[2], where you will choose a >> system language, keyboard layout, privacy settings, setup some online >> accounts and finally create a username and password. >> >> Without any effort on my part, the final splash screen when completing >> the initial setup will say "Welcome to Baserock" with a nice fat button >> which says "Start using Baserock", or, it will say something else if you >> have not selected an English locale, or course. >> >> Currently the only noticeable problems with the initial setup are with >> the online accounts; the icons (for google, facebook, owncloud, etc) >> seem to have gone missing in the last build; and when trying to create a >> google or facebook online account, you will get a message about an >> unacceptable TLS certificate, some more integration-foo is needed in >> that area. >> >> >> After Logging In >> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >> Once you log in, you will have a "quite" usable GNOME Shell UX. >> >> The shell seems to respond well and nothing seems to be missing after a >> few passes. When browsing your installed applications, you will have >> access to "Terminal" (gnome-terminal), and from there you can simply >> type "su -". >> >> The user created by the initial setup tool is not a sudoer, but for now >> we still have a passwordless root account, you can just give it a >> password and ssh into your box in the normal way afterwards, or do >> anything you want to your system from there. >> >> You have your basic graphical file browsing experience provided by >> nautilus which works nicely and GNOME Control Center is also installed, >> so you don't have any useless buttons provided by the GNOME Shell: >> everything exposed by the shell does something. >> >> Asides from some missing icons in the control center, it seems to behave >> quite well also, you can go ahead and set your wallpaper and lock screen >> backgrounds without issue, also it withstands a language change quite >> well (telling you that you need to restart the session for the change to >> take effect - gdm's login screen wont update it's language until the >> next boot but I suspect that is an upstream issue). >> >> >> Next Steps >> ~~~~~~~~~~ >> What we see with the GNOME system so far seems to work well but requires >> more testing - there are issues with online accounts and the journal >> shows that geoclue lacks permission to access some services. I was >> unable to test with internet access from the VM so far but I suspect >> that the Initial Setup would be able to guess my location automatically. >> >> I would like to iron out the kinks with the currently installed basics >> before continuing to installing applications. As more GNOME components >> get integrated properly, we gain momentum and integrating the higher >> level bits gets easier as they receive a more GNOME friendly environment >> to run in. >> >> We should soon also be ready to pursue CI and automatic production of a >> "Live CD", but I would really appreciate some feedback on this front, as >> nobody has replied yet to my last email on that subject[3]. >> >> >> Stay tuned for the next episode of GNOME on Baserock, which should have >> the remaining integration kinks ironed out and add a new stratum with >> GNOME applications. >> >> Best, >> -Tristan >> >> >> [0]:https://gerrit.baserock.org/#/q/topic:fix-samba-build >> [1]:https://gerrit.baserock.org/#/q/topic:gnome-control-center >> [2]:https://wiki.gnome.org/Design/OS/InitialSetup >> [3]:http://listmaster.pepperfish.net/pipermail/baserock-dev-baserock.org/2... >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> baserock-dev mailing list >> baserock-dev(a)baserock.org >> http://listmaster.pepperfish.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/baserock-dev-ba... >> >