• Developers using Fedora as a workstation/laptop to develop on:
  • gcc 4.3, perl 5.10
  • NetworkManager has had huge improvements, making it one of the best wireless experiences on laptops for any operating system; it now supports a wide range of mobile broadband solutions
  • Live USB with persistence means your favorite development environment in your pocket now lets you carry around and update your projects.
  • Eclipse that runs well on Linux runs best on Fedora, and subsequently Red Hat Enterprise Linux
  • Use the Microsoft Windows-based tool livecd-creator to create live instances of Fedora on USB flash media
  • KDE 4 and GNOME 2.22 for great desktop environments
  • Partition resizing at install time, including NTFS partitions
  • Pre Upgrade, to upgrade an older installation directly
  • … and OpenJDK 6!
• Developers targeting the environment for applications:
  • D-Bus improvements
  • More libvirt, the virtualization API
  • ext4, begin working now with the next iteration of this stable and standard file system
  • XULRunner now the common engine for Gecko using applications
  • Common dictionary used across applications fixes proliferation of dictionaries
  • freeIPA provides a common account system that can be adopted for an application
  • As Java based applications begin to get packages in to Fedora, many should land in Fedora 9. Hear that, JBoss.org fans?
  • … and OpenJDK 6!
• Developers managing systems, such as testing and build:
  • func, the Fedora Unified Network Controller
  • cobbler, rapid provisioning services
  • oVirt, the WebUI virtual machine manager, and Virtual Machine Manager, the desktop client
  • … and OpenJDK 6!

For a good general overview of Fedora 9, read Fedora Project Leader Paul W. Frields article in Red Hat Magazine, “Fedora 9: Get yours and get involved“. The full feature list for Fedora 9 is also a good read.

Hear Barton (and a little bit of me) interview Tom and Patrick about the journey of OpenJDK and IcedTea: OGG and MP3

The discussion covered the history of making a 100% free and open source runtime in Fedora from the initial Java open source code, which itself was 96% of a complete and self-building JDK. This remaining 4% was filled with components from GNU Classpath by the IcedTea team. The term “IcedTea” came from the package name used because, at that time, Fedora didn’t have a trademark license to use “OpenJDK”. Of the GNU Classpath code used, some if it ended up completing the circle to be included in OpenJDK. Based on relationships made at FOSDEM 2007, the team from Fedora/Red Hat were able to work with folks from Sun and other places to do work in the community in advance of resolving the remaining 4%, and do it in a way that could be more easily folded into OpenJDK.

What is riveting about this story is the speed and quality of the outcome that is clearly due to the open source methodology used. By opening all the code that they could, Sun made it possible for others to fill the gaps Sun could not immediately fill. By working closely throughout that process, all of the open source code was used and tested in the community. Sun had time to choose the right license so the code could be merged. If Sun had waited until they could open all the code, we would have lost an entire year of development (at least.)

Now that OpenJDK 6 is available in EPEL 5 for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, it is only a matter of time before it gets certified to appear in an update. This is being worked on by Keith Seitz and Mark Wielaard, who have “not many” test suites to complete to be ready to pass the TCK. Once that is done, the implementation can be called “Java compliant”, which is an important step to being ready for an Enterprise Linux 5.x update.

Listen to the audio to get all the details, and check out Barton’s blog entry for his viewpoint.

As he developed Ajax4jsf, Alexander began working with the MyFaces community, and started communicating more with the larger JSF community. He moved the project to SourceForge at the suggestion of RichFaces lead developer Sergey Smirnov (no relation.) Exadel began developing the RichFaces JSF components library and Alexander joined the project as a framework background developer.

At the time it moved to java.net, Ajax4jsf had grown more useful when integrated with the RichFaces component library. RichFaces, however, was still not open source. The combined projects came to the attention of JBoss, which contracted with Exadel to open source both projects as JBoss projects. These were recently combined into a single project under the RichFaces name, available through JBoss.org. (RichFaces is combined with the JBoss Tools Eclipse-based developer environment to make up the JBoss Developer Studio subscription offering.)

Current activity for the RichFaces project includes a focus on building RichFaces functionality within JBoss Portlet Bridge. JBoss Portlet Bridge implements JSR-301 to provide support for not only JSF running in a portal, but also Seam and RichFaces.

Joining forces with JBoss has brought significantly more usage, ten times or more in terms of downloads. In particular, Alexander says there is an obvious increase in forum questions and discussions. In terms of attracting contributors, there are currently very few code contributions from the community outside of Exadel and JBoss. Alexander and Sergey describe the development process for the RichFaces team as being structured with a well-oiled process, which creates a higher barrier of entry for people outside of the team. As early ways to bring in external contributors, there are current needs for testing, defining future requirements, and requesting features and enhancements.

For the future roadmap of RichFaces, Alexander says that the next step is toward semantic web technologies.

This audiocast is available from the JBoss.org podcast channel, in OGG and MP3 formats.

1. Install the Fedora Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) repository files:

   su -c "rpm -Uvh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/i386/epel-release-5-2.noarch.rpm"

2. Install the OpenJDK 6 package:

   su -c "yum install java-1.6.0-openjdk"

Read more about how to use EPEL. Fedora EPEL is a community run project to bring Fedora packages to Enterprise Linux users when the package is not included by Red Hat in an Enterprise Linux release. Read more on the Fedora EPEL wiki pages, including links to package view (i386, x86_64, ppc) per EPEL version (4, 5 to correspond with Enterprise Linux versions.)

Currently I’m sitting in Jono Bacon’s talk on Ubuntu, and it’s amazing the thematic matches. People who really get community, the value of working with upstream, and treating community in the right ways. I think that, aside from logos, I could take Jono’s talk and give it about Fedora. Well, all except the Chuck Norris images.

It should be apparent that Red Hat is looking to put its bread where the open source butter is spread, in the acquisition of middleware powerhouse JBoss. As can happen with an acquisition, that propelled Red Hat even further into the Java camp. Yet is has been several of the long-time Red Hat engineers who are also responsible for leading and coding on open source projects that enabled all this to happen (GNU Classpath, IcedTea, gcj, and all around Eclipse, to name a prominent few.) What may have started as hedging the bet that Sun would follow through, all of this work has resulted in a stronger relationship across Java camps.

In a fair article on the freeing of Java, “Java fully open-sourced ‘by end of year’“, ZDNet quotes Sun that this year is going to see the end of all the remaining unfreeable parts of the JRE. What you think about that has to be balanced with what you believe. And this time, I find I’m believing that Sun can and will do it in 2008.

See you next week at JavaOne and CommunityOne. I’ll be there, on Monday talking about Fedora (and OpenJDK), and the rest of the week in the pavilion at the JBoss booth.

As an ongoing joint operation, this audiocast is the first that is fed into the JBoss.org podcast channel (ATOM feed.) This is fun, as it allows us to distribute not only a title and rich description, but a thumbnail image full of meaning:

http://freedomdefined.org/Licenses/NC

Gavin provides an exceptionally nice walk-through behind not just how Web Beans works, but why it works the way it does. He provides comparison to AOP features, and even demonstrates the recursive nature of Web Beans functionality being used to define Web Beans functionality. Meta-annotations are cool. Meta-meta-annotations are even cooler.

We’ve broken the talk into 3 easy-to-digest chunks:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3