Is there any blocker or anything else expected to get done before Solus 4.1 release? Just out of curiosity

It's currently blocked by:

1. Broken appstream metadata for the Software Center, per T7805. I need to remind @DataDrake when he gets the time to rebuild it against his local repo (since my home server is running Fedora with a newer version of appstream-glib and I haven't had success with my patched newer version of it, whereas at least Bryan's machine with the local repo is running Solus so he can rebuild it using our version of appstream-glib with the eopkg patches).
2. Some smaller infra changes I would want to do first (namely moving us over to Fastly again with RIT as a backend)
3. I'd like to implement a desktop icon view in Budgie so I could finally update Nautilus. Fairly trivial to do but I just haven't been able to find the time for it.

In T7794#156461, @JoshStrobl wrote:

It's currently blocked by:

1. Broken appstream metadata for the Software Center, per T7805. I need to remind @DataDrake when he gets the time to rebuild it against his local repo (since my home server is running Fedora with a newer version of appstream-glib and I haven't had success with my patched newer version of it, whereas at least Bryan's machine with the local repo is running Solus so he can rebuild it using our version of appstream-glib with the eopkg patches).
2. Some smaller infra changes I would want to do first (namely moving us over to Fastly again with RIT as a backend)
3. I'd like to implement a desktop icon view in Budgie so I could finally update Nautilus. Fairly trivial to do but I just haven't been able to find the time for it.

I thought the bullet number 2 was already resolved.

No and in fact that's why some users are facing issues while updating the system.

One last item from me to do and that's moving us back to Fastly, then it's Solus 4.1 release time. Getting solbuild 1.4.5.2 out the door to move the images was the final item, with @DataDrake fixing Solus appstream data in the Software Center and having it point to getsol.us as well, so only thing that obviously needs to be on packages now is the packages themselves.

Nuking of the solbuild images and appstream data will occur next week, then I'll be sorting out Fastly. I think we'll hit their limit pretty quickly for what they'll be providing, but I'll be reaching out to them to see if they'd be willing to provide us more bandwidth (given we operate at an OS scale...as an OS, who woulda thunk it).

Since I know some people are eager for Solus 4.1, I've updated the task to highlight our current blockers / items and will detail below:

1. Fastly item has been removed. Despite multiple interactions with their support team and multiple bumps of our support ticket (which CC'ed a lead in their Open Source Program), there has been no progress made or recent responses from them. At the moment we are taking this off the table and may look at any alternatives that also have open source programs or similar where they could sponsor / provide bandwidth.
2. Mesa 19.3.1 will be the first stable release in the Mesa 19.3 series, with 19.3 being a development release. This series introduces a wide variety of radv fixes and improvements that should enable newer AMD graphics cards to function and perform better. Mesa 19.3.1 is currently slated for the 18th but obviously that is subject to change depending on how the Mesa folks view the state of it. Stable repo users will first receive it on the 20th (at earliest) and I'm hopeful we can get some folks like polomi on our Flarum / Forum to validate RX 5700-XT support. There is no reason for us to put out a new ISO with half-baked support for brand new harder, so we'd rather ensure it gets properly validated.
3. AppArmor and usysconf updates will be happening over the next few days. I'll be tagging a new usysconf for @DataDrake, who rewrote aa-lsm-hook and updated usysconf to support the newer AppArmor (and move us to a saner codebase for aa-lsm-hook, in my opinion). Testing was also facilitated by @livingsilver94, so thanks to him for that. These updates should hopefully resolve some issues people have encountered with snaps failing to start, where running usysconf run -f (and thus the AppArmor trigger) would resolve it.
4. There is an align partitions patch that has been graciously provided by @axaxs which we will want to land and test for Solus 4.1.

So what does this mean?

It means Solus 4.1 is going to happen, should Murphy permit, within the next several weeks. Obviously we want to be cognisant of people's time during the holidays and ensure that we aren't rushing a release out before the end of 2019 just to say "we put out another release before 2019". If we feel comfortable with getting a release tagged at the tail end of this month, it'll happen, otherwise people should expect it in the first couple weeks of January. I was hoping to get one out in October but unfortunately it just didn't play out that way, but on the plus side it gave us more time to clear out some older software stack "rot".

This status update is very appreciated, thanks. By the way, I'm polomi on Flarum, I'm not using the same name here so I thought that I'd clarify. For Navi support testing, I'll be happy to provide any required assistance when the time comes. Is there a list of things that should be tested? Or just run of the mill check if the installer works, and that graphical programs such as games run properly?

I know that I've been asking for Navi support for a long time, but hey, no pressure! It will happen when it will happen. :) It's gonna be the holidays soon so do enjoy yourselves. Thanks for the hard work!

EDIT: Oh yeah there's something I wanted to ask. Looking at the update history of mesalib in Solus, it seems like it sometimes gets updates to x.x.0 versions, and sometimes to x.x.1 (which makes sense for stability). Is there any reason why sometimes the x.x.0 versions are landed, such as 18.1.0 and 19.0.0?

@rjurga Thanks for pinging, hard for me to keep track of everyone and their different nicks :D In terms of testing, it basically is:

1. Does the ISO boot and install? (I can cook up a testing one for you when we land Mesa)
2. Testing like games (open source or otherwise, doesn't matter which), optionally video editing in something like kdenlive.
3. Video playback (Firefox and your video player of choice).

I know that I've been asking for Navi support for a long time

Honestly sorry about the delay.

Looking at the update history of mesalib in Solus, it seems like it sometimes gets updates to x.x.0 versions, and sometimes to x.x.1 (which makes sense for stability). Is there any reason why sometimes the x.x.0 versions are landed, such as 18.1.0 and 19.0.0?

It kinda depends on what we expect to have changed with the Mesa release, what testing we're expecting to need to do, if the update warrants a massive ABI change that'll necessitate fixes in stuff like LSI or stack upgrades, if there are other reasons to get it updated (e.g. using it with new LLVM, needing specific OpenGL or Vulkan support), and past experiences with immediately jumping onto development releases. So basically it varies on a release-to-release basis. In the olden days (2015) we'd almost always wait for stable. In 2016 we had a phase where we would immediately jump on development releases but we got bitten in the behind a few times on that (or we'd have to constantly be jumping between different RCs or syncing for Vulkan fixes, that was a thing too), so that wasn't the most optimal solution. Varied in 2017 and beyond.

In T7794#161984, @JoshStrobl wrote:

1. Does the ISO boot and install? (I can cook up a testing one for you when we land Mesa)
2. Testing like games (open source or otherwise, doesn't matter which), optionally video editing in something like kdenlive.
3. Video playback (Firefox and your video player of choice).

Sounds good, I should be able to test all of that and more. I'll make sure to test both OpenGL and Vulkan games, and to test Firefox with and without hardware acceleration.

And thanks for the mesa explanation, it's nice to see the big picture.

Just being curious, is systemd upgrade also expected for the new iso?

In T7794#162022, @yaymalaga wrote:

Just being curious, is systemd upgrade also expected for the new iso?

No.

I don't think the ISO refresh task should have been merged into this, it seems like a different question in relation to this thread. He wanted to know if something like refreshing the ISO every month is something that could be done.

We don't do snapshots. Merging in with a release task makes that obvious, and why we haven't done the release yet.

Hmm.

Then let's go and release it ?

Neat. Congrats! So is it testing time? If the Navi tests are needed, I can do them this evening.

Oh I would like to test too and give some feedback. Got a lot of quirky machines :p

OMG!!!! I hope it gets released really soon. I miss Solus, and the current kernel on the ISO does not work with my current setup; so cannot install

Shall we update the branding material for a point release or do we keep the same ?

I'll update the branding material and necessary packages when I'm ready to tag a release.