I promised that I’ll write a post about how you can contribute. There are several ways how to contribute to MySQL, but most of it means modifying packages. And as everything in openSUSE is built using openSUSE Build service, first post will be actually pretty general obs and osc howto. In the next posts, I’ll go deeper into specific details of MySQL packaging.

Find the package

If you want to play with any package in openSUSE Build Service, you need to have a Novell login and preferably the osc command line client for obs. You can do most of the stuff from web as well, but this way is more comfortable 😉 So let’s say that we want to play with MariaDB. First we have to find package we want to update. This can be easily done on the web. Just take a look at packages at server:database repository. mariadb is the version currently included in the Factory. If you want to update bleeding edge version, these are named usually something like mariadb-53 for 5.3 branch or mysql-commmunity-server-56 for MySQL Community Server 5.6 branch. So basically if package name doesn’t contain version, it’s package for factory, if it does, it is just for people wanting something that is not in Factory yet (or already).

This is going to be just a brief blog post with one important image. You probably all already know that there is bunch of people in openSUSE community who are working on getting ARM supported by distribution. And you probably already seen many blog posts about how great it is working. Well this is one of them. I’m happy owner of ASUS Transformer machine. As a geek I have root on my android machine. And since not long time ago, I also had a Debian chroot there to be able to run my favorite applications. But not any more. I replaced my Debian chroot with openSUSE one and now I can use zypper happily and forget everything about apt-get.
How did I did that? I started with a simple package in obs, changed BuildRequires to the set of packages I wanted to have, run osc build armv7l standard and after osc created chroot for me, I just took it away. And fixed few things after switching to it on my Transformer. I’m still missing some packages, but hopefully they will be available soon 😉

Looking at still progressing survey(currently more than 50 responses), I still see, that nobody uses server:database:UNSTABLE repository in openSUSE Build Service. So I have an idea to drop it completely – whole repository – and move packages that are only there (like MariaDB 5.3 or MySQL Community Server 5.6) to the server:database repository. This might make it easier for people to find these packages. But it has some downsides as well. Original purpose of UNSTABLE repository was to have it in name that this contains alpha/beta versions and that it may not work or worse. Once I will move it to the server:database repository, only distinction would be summary and package name. And who read the summary… I guess I will go for it and we will see. But if you have some strong arguments against, speak now, otherwise I will proceed in next few days 😉

Earlier today I asked on this blog and everywhere else people to fill in a simple survey of how do they use MySQL, which one and what should I focus on. I already have more than 30 answers (don’t stop answering, keep providing more) so I will have to publish the results and do something with them. But first I’ll let the survey run for at least a week 😉 Oh, and even though I write MySQL, this post is general about all MySQL variants (MariaDB, MySQL Cluster, … (not counting Drizzle)).
Now what is behind this survey? Well, I have a lot of stuff to do and MySQL is not my only responsibility. And I know that sometimes it can use some extra hands. Sometimes I get lucky and we have new beta packaged same day as it was released, other times it takes me weeks or even more than month before I’ll get to the updates. And I see several ways, how to make MySQL presence even better in openSUSE Build Service. But as always, it’s matter of manpower and time. As several people already responded, that they want to get involved, I’ll publish in next few days several posts about how you can help with various tasks around MySQL. So ti will be even better available, more polished and more awesome 😉
Other thing I was interested in was whether somebody actually uses the non-core stuff. Whether it is great to have it around or whether I should just stop doing it and spend more time on the core stuff.
First of my doubts was whether having server:database:UNSTABLE repository is a good thing… Well, so far not many people responded that they use it, but quite a lot of people responded that they want the latest & coolest stuff. I can imagine this means MySQL Community Server 5.6 or MariaDB 5.3. Both of them can be found in server:database:UNSTABLE. So I think this one I should keep around, but I should be definitely more verbose about what we already have.
Second doubt was whether anybody actually uses MySQL Cluster we added to openSUSE in 11.4. So far I’m not really convinced. But survey just started, so we will see. If nobody uses it, I may drop it after 12.1 from Factory and have it just in additional repository. We will see, how survey will end.
So thank you for filling in the survey and expect some more information about how you can help to improve MySQL presence in openSUSE soon 😉

This is not really a blog post. I just would like to know you opinion on state of MySQL at openSUSE and openSUSE Build Service. But I’m interested in your feedback even if you are not using openSUSE or even if you are not using packages I provide. As my TODO is quite long and I can’t do everything, I would like to know what should I pay the most attention to. Later I will publish a post about the current state of MySQL and how you can participate 😉

Next week is a Hack Week. Do you know, what Hack Week is? It’s week during which we at SUSE come to work and work on anything we want. Anything? Well anything open source related. So if you normally work as a designer, you can sit down and spend a whole week hacking Linux kernel. Or on the other hand, as kernel developer, you can try to improve design of our web. What are my plans for next week? I’m not sure yet. I still have some requests regarding openSUSE Paste. But as week is a long time, I would like to try something else, requiring more time.

Yet another advertisement for openSUSE Conference 2011. Something I’ll be participating in as well. But this time, all the glory belongs to Manu Gupta. I’ll be just helping out. We will have together presentation about SaX3. Have you already heard about SaX3? If not,continue reading 😉
SaX2 was X configuration tool. It was using xorg.conf file and it allowed people to set various X properties in GUI. It was a user friendly way how to set up Xorg. But X developers made automatic configuration much better and xorg.conf file obsolete. They replaced it with something much better – configuration directory xorg.conf.d. You can place just snippets of original xorg.conf file in there to override some properties. It’s much better, but unfortunately it also made SaX2 obsolete. And even though automatic configuration is great, there still people that want to tweak just a few details. These people missed SaX2. One of the GSoC projects was to create SaX3 that will be aware of xorg.conf.d directory, respect it and would create just the necessary snippets. So your X configuration will stay as simple as possible, but you’ll also have possibility to configure it easily from GUI.
Manu started working on this project. He had to learn a lot of new things, but he put a lot of effort into that and in the end, there is completely new SaX3. It uses libyui for GUI toolkits abstraction. It is able to run as Qt, GTK or even ncurses application. It uses Augeas to parse xorg.conf.d files and during the summer even the Augeas Xorg lens was improved to support things that were needed. During the SaX3 talk, you will learn, what SaX3 can do for you, how it works and also a little bit about interesting technologies beneath.
If you are eager to see, what it already can do, you can check Manu’s blog about SaX3 and especially Get your hand dirty post 😉

Some time ago I wrote a blog post about osc in Gentoo. As I already stated there, we’ve got some pretty cool technologies in openSUSE and I would like to promote them everywhere. And as I’m also partially Gentoo user and I have many Gentoo friends, I’m trying to make some of the coolest openSUSE technologies available on Gentoo. One of the cool things we’ve got is libYUI.

openSUSE Conference 2011 is getting closer and closer. Everybody is getting excited and looking forward to it. So what will be my contribution to the many interesting talks and sessions at openSUSE Conference? I would like to discuss, promote and improve collaboration with universities. But let’s start with what, why and how 😉

Why?

There is plenty of great students on universities. These students needs to write semestral works, thesis and much more. Usually the toughest task is to choose some interesting topic. Teachers don’t care that much. They have many students and they are happy if student comes with his own topic. But not all students have some strong interests that would help them with topic. These students need some inspiration. Many of them ends up doing yet another chess implementation, mine sweepers or tic-tac-toe. One time projects that nobody will use afterwards. Many hours of students productive time gets wasted. Many hours that could be used so much better. But in opensource world, we have wide variety of tasks from simple ones to hard ones. And we can always use some extra help. If we would just join forces, we would get more contributions to the open source projects, raise awareness of open source and students would get interesting topic, their work wouldn’t go in vain and they can show it to their future employers to get a better job. Whats there for teachers? They don’t have to think about yet another topic and students will seek out help in the community first as it is easier accessible and provides better help. So overall, it is win-win-win scenario 😉

One of the great things we’ve got at openSUSE is openSUSE Build Service. Web service where we can commit sources and recipes and it will produce bunch of binaries for various distributions. Not just for openSUSE. We are friendly people and we love to work together with other distributions. After all, we all have a common goal – make open source succeed and defeat common enemies (some greedy people trying to steal some of our freedoms). OBS follows this path and it is a great tool that can help anybody to package his software for any distribution. It is easy to use and easy to get involved. We even have a public instance where anybody can submit a data and use package for his own purpose. If you want to build a package just for Fedora, we will let you do that. Of course we will be much happier if you’ll consider building it for openSUSE as well, but we don’t force you to do so.