Releases/5/FC5Future

Proposed Development Areas for Fedora Core 5 and Fedora Project

This page lists suggestions for the Fedora Project (Fedora Core and otherwise) over the next release of Fedora Core. This is not a final list and it is subject to change.

Another good place to get ideas is the WishList.

The Fedora Core 5 bugzilla tracker provides a wealth of information on new features and bug fixes planned

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=150221

Prelimenary schedule available at http://fedora.redhat.com/About/schedule/

Trim down core

Packages that provide duplicate functionality in Fedora Core, or that aren't essential to a basic operating system, should move to Extras.

Several ideas exist around this:

• Main distro down to 1 or 2 discs - its growing too much
• Main distro down to 1 disk + 1 disk gnome, 1 kde, one java, 1 other stuff
• All stuff for personal install and the support for the most important languages (???) on the first two CDs. Big stuff like openoffice-lang-support for not that important langages only in extras?

GUI Package manager and Updater

GUI package manager (replacing system-config-packages) that avoids the synaptic like long list of packages with a better task oriented system that shares the code with Anaconda installer and use Pup Updater for package updating as well as a means to replacing the current applet.

• Developers: Paul Nasrat, Jeremy Katz
• Due date: Pup is in the development tree (rawhide), Package manager in planning stages. Package manager may trail anaconda changes (since many of the same dependencies exist)

Create Live-CD/DVD

Some people are working on ["LiveCD"] already. Should also be usable as rescue media.

• Developer(s): Steve Grubb, ChitleshGoorah
• Due date: 3 months

• URL: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/LiveCD

Security

SELinux

• Third party policy changes.

o Using Binary Policy mechanism developed by Tresys. o Allow easier customization by users/third parties without requiring policy sources o Should work similar in concept to shared libraries.

• Begin investigating use of labeled documents.

o Example allow users to specify a document as “Company Confidential” which would cause print daemons and perhaps other tools to attach header and footer to document.

• Begin process of getting LSPP certification.
• X-Windows Support

o Trusted X-Windows (SE-X)

• Better lock down of userspace

o Strict Policy. + Add user add/roles support. + Ivan Gyurdiev's Changes o Targeted Policy + Colin Walter's Changes

• Mechanism to change allow easier change from Targeted policy to MLS Policy.

o Apply technology from IBM/TCS into mainline OS for MLS/LSPP support. o Add selinux-policy-mls to Fedora

• Support for security context in ?IPTables

Eliminate shared /tmp directory

• Polyinstantiation of the users mounted directories (/tmp directory)

Use early log-in and get rid of rhgb

Some people are working on it already. See Bug 151952

Maybe we could also use this to have a graphical shutdown? Maybe in a way so you can also cancel the shutdown easily?

• Developer(s): ??
• Due date: ?? (soon)

Sound-Server

From the whishlist: Better sound server replacement - no arts, or esd, something else. Alan Cox had some ideas about synchronization that he considered essential for a new sound server. Have to dig in the archives to find what he thought of these choices specifically.

• Developer(s): ??
• Due date: ??

Better firewall configuration tool

A default firewall application other than system-config-securitylevel for desktop users

• Developer(s): ??
• Due date: ??

home user backup in FC5

Backup tool available in menu (allowing incremental backups, {ex,in}clusion of specific files, exclude sizes bigger than X Mbyte, target to external disks/netwrok)

A graphical backup utility based on rdiff is currently under development as one of the FedoraBounties sponsored by Google's Summer of Code.

• Developer(s): Dave Arter
• Due date: 2 months

Deprecate X Font server

• Developer(s): Mike Harris
• Due date: Done

The X11 core font subsystem has been around forever. There are thousands of both open source and proprietary applications out there, many of which no longer have source code, that require core fonts support.

It's not feasible to eliminate core font support now, nor in the forseeable future. It's likely that it will still be used by enough applications in 10 years that it will need to be included still.

The core fonts system currently "works", and has very low ongoing maintenance overhead.

Changing the OS to use the X server directly instead of xfs, causes additional development work to have to be allocated to make chkfontpath and other utilities work, does not buy us any real value, and may stir unforseen problems up that further consume developer resources unnecessarily.

When we evaluate all of the possible X11 related projects we can spend our limited X development resources on, there are countless other much much more important projects that are more worthy of our time and effort overall.

Plan summary from existing Fedora Projects

A summary of the current plans and development direction from each of the projects listed on the Fedora website is needed. This will help developers understand where contributions can be made, etc.

• Developer(s): Fedora project leaders
• Due date: ?? (soon)

Link

Free Java related enhancements

The proposal is to integrate gcjwebplugin (Java applets will work out of the box) , Azureus (Bittorrent client) and RSSOwl (RSS feed aggregator), GCC 4.1 (for better Java funtionality)

• Developer(s): Anthony Green, Fedora Java developement team
• Due date: ?? (soon)

Link Developers: what about JXplorer?

java-gcj-compat

• GNU Crypto fix for Eclipse extssh support

Casey Marshall has already committed a Diffie-Hellman JCE provider to GNU Classpath so this is just a matter of testing.

• import all JAWT fixes

All the necessary patches are already in GNU Classpath and libgcj.

• Jessie merged into GNU Classpath
• GNU Crypto core algorithms merged into GNU Classpath
• gjdoc merged into GNU Classpath enabling …
• an --enable-javadocs option to libgcj
• make gcjx java-gcj-compat’s javac commands

Not sure if this one is doable in time; I don’t mean full gcjx, just the bytecode-compiler portion in a standalone executable.

• include Tritonus or some other sound implementation

AWT

• ImageMagick backend for ImageIO
• Graphics/Imaging refactoring for GTK 2.8 and Cairo
• MegaMek packages in Fedora Extras

This just involves a few AWT bug fixes now.

• fix all 1.5 japi issues in java.awt.* packages
• fix all 1.5 japi issues in javax.imageio.* packages

Swing

• RHDB tools in Fedora Extras: Administrator, Visual Explain and Control Center.

This will require updating these tools to support PostgreSQL 8.0.

• Limewire in Fedora Extras

It would be absolutely awesome to have this Swing app working on the free stack but I’m not sure it’s doable in the FC5 time frame. Would anyone like to undertake it?

SWT

• Azureus in Fedora Extras

Again, not sure if this is doable before FC5 but this would be awesome to have.

gcjwebplugin

• implement and test security features in GNU Classpath to allow running untrusted bytecode

It’s very unlikely that this one will be finished before FC5 but I’d like to at least have started the implementation by then.

http://fitzsim.org/blog/?m=200509

Bittorrent in Core?

Bittorrent is an important protocol - important enough that we distribute Fedora with it. It does not duplicate anything else in core.

The proposal is that there is a needs for both command line and GUI Bittorrent apps in Core - whether it's Azureus or not is the question. Bittorrent itself has a GTK2 GUI that works fine on FC4.

Package groups for Extras

• Developer(s): SethVidal
• Due date: ??

Link

Better synchronization of independently packaged modules with main kernel package

Using dkms for the Core kernel module packages would help with some of the synchronization issues that were seen during FC-4 development. It would also help fill the gap between a kernel release and Extras module package updates being pushed out.

• Developer(s): ??
• Due date: ??

Note: DKMS exists in Fedora Extras repository. Current discussion indicates that developers consider DKMS is not considered a favorable solution for various reasons Link

Proposed solution is better use of build triggers in build system.

Link

Repository aware installer

Making anaconda have the ability to use yum repositories during install time would be very beneficial for a number of reasons. See [wiki:Self:AnacondaWorkItems#yumdepsolve]

• Developer(s): Paul Nasrat
• Due date: ??

Link

dmraid-support in installer

To allow install of Fedora Core on "Bios-/Software-Raid-Arrays" found on many modern Mainboards (Intel Matrix Raid, Highpoint, Promise, Silicon-Image, Via,...). Link

• Developer(s): Peter Jones
• Due date: ??

Virtualisation: Xen

More integration of Xen, allowing [wiki:Self:Anaconda/XenInstall installation of virtual hosts] and have all the OS functionality work under Xen

• Developer(s): Rik Van Riel (kernel), Jeremy Katz (Installer)
• Due date: soon

Link

Directory Server/LDAP admin tools

Now that Red Hat has released Directory Server, it would be quite nice to have some administration tools for it and LDAP in general.

• Developer(s): Chris Blizzard and the DS team
• Due date: ??

JXplorer is maintained, and apparently has a good reputation. Could it be built with GCJ?

Note: Might be useful to try compiling it with Rawhide and send the output and questions to Fedora Java development list - Rahul

Link

Advanced Init system

Moving to a more advanced Init system using dependencies, etc. Along with 9 month cycle, could also be good time to stop using legacy directories in /etc/rc.d (leave their contents alone, just don't use them).

• Developer(s): ??
• Due date: ??

Note: This might affect LSB - Rahul

Link Notes

Boot and Shutdown speed improvements

• Developer(s): ??
• Due date: ??

Link

Redundant library reduction

Some applications link to multiple libraries providing similar functionality. Reduction of such situations should help in various ways.

• Developer(s): ??
• Due date: ??

Link

More Exec Shield features

Enhancing ExecShield should provide for a more robust and stable Core overall.

• Developer(s): ??
• Due date: ??

Link

CD image generating tool

A tool to create CD images from a list of wanted packages would be very nice. The tool would need to generate directory images with all the desired packages, plus their dependencies.

• Developer(s): ??
• Due date: ??

Link

Better Fedora Legacy integration

Due to the release goals for Fedora, distribution releases become "unsupported" rather quickly as a new releases comes out. Ownership of these releases is transfered to the Fedora Legacy project. The integration between Core, Extras, and Legacy needs to improve in order to make the project successful.

• Developer(s): ??
• Due date: ??

Note: It would be good to clarify whether Fedora Legacy is officially part of Fedora project and if not add a disclaimer/prompt before transitition/disable it by default otherwise. - Rahul

Input Method Changes

"Some design and implementation of i18n input stuff that we need in FC5." (Talk to Warren for more details.)

• Developer: Jens Petersen
• Luya's note: IIIMF input method is obsoleted by SCIM on Fedora Core 5

Laptop suspend support

Get laptop suspend working.

Gnome 2.14

Get it included. The current target of 2.14 according to the GNOME schedule is March 15th. Current FC5 target is Feb 27th (as of 02 November 2005)

Encrypted Filesystems

• Encrypted swap: Bugzilla 127378
• Encrypted root filesystem: Bugzilla 124789
• Removable encrypted devices: Project

Various projects to add encrypted filesystem functionality.

• Developer(s): Mike Petullo
• Due date: ??