RahulSundaram/SpinsProcess

Fedora Spins Approval Process

This is currently just a proposal as requested by the Fedora Board. Don't rely on information here until it gets approved.

Spin: A variant of Fedora. Also known by other terms like remastering, remixing or simply customizing. Official spins can only be a subset of packages available in the official Fedora repository.

Fedora Spins

The currently available Fedora spins are listed at

• http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/CustomSpins

Tools

There are two primary tools that are available in the Fedora repository can be used to create a official spin:

• livecd-creator - Used to create live cd/dvd images. They can be installed to hard disk or USB disks.
• pungi - Used to create regular installation images.

They both use kickstart configuration files. Revisor which is a graphical wrapper around livecd-tools and pungi can be used by but the exact image should be reproducible with either livecd-creator or pungi using the kickstart file to verify them.

Approval For New Spins

The approval process for having Fedora Project approve a spin and being allowed to use the Fedora trademarks are as follows:

• Submit your proposal with a description and a kickstart file to fedora-devel list and get community feedback.
• Coordinate with any related Fedora sub-projects or Special Interest Groups. As an example, a Fedora art spin needs to be coordinated with the Fedora artwork project.
• Submit your spin proposal along with the kickstart file to ReleaseEngineering and Board for technical approval and use of Fedora trademarks. ReleaseEngineering team and board will inform the spin proposer after discussing and verifying the technical details and feasibility of the proposal. A spin has to be distinct and serve a real need to be approved.

Respins

All custom spins can be updated post-release. If there are post-release updates of a spin, they do not need to be approved by the Fedora Board or ReleaseEngineering. The spin maintainer can do a new respin. New respins cannot be made more than once per month. Respins can introduce new packages or change configuration details if necessary but spin maintainers must avoid risks that can introduce regressions or breakage.

Release Process

• The spin maintainers will get commit access to the appropriate repository to keep the spin kickstart file updated
• The spin maintainers will use the kickstart files to do releases following the Fedora release cycle. Intermediate releases or respins are allowed.
• All spins will have a initial public beta release followed by a general release.

Quality

The robustness of either new spins or respins are primarily the responsibility of the spin maintainers and related sub projects or SIG's and testing/quality of spins are not managed by the ReleaseEngineering team. After doing reasonable initial testing, the spin maintainer can commit the kickstart file to the repository and do a public beta release for new spins as well as respins followed by a general release.

Hosting

• If a spin is approved, it can be hosted in the Fedora mirrors or in http://spins.fedoraproject.org (bittorent only). Approval of a spin does not automatically imply hosting in the official website however. Hosting is determined by actual or perceived interest in the spins proposed. If they were hosted elsewhere previously, download stats can one of the metrics to determine interest in the spins.

• Beta releases won't be retained after the general release to save on hosting space, bandwidth and avoid confusion over general release availability.

• If a respin is available, older versions may be replaced or removed based on availability of hosting space and spins maintainers should assume that previous versions won't be retained.