[continued from previous message]

• Automating the image publishing process and merging to src/release/.
(Li-Wen Hsu)

• Colin Su is testing adding FreeBSD support in Azure Pipelines

□ https://github.com/microsoft/azure-pipelines-agent/pull/3266

□ Building and publishing snapshot builds to Azure community gallery.

Open tasks:

• Update FreeBSD-related doc at Microsoft Learn

• Update sysutils/azure-agent to the latest version

• Upstream local modifications of Azure agent

• Port Linux Virtual Machine Extensions for Azure

Sponsor: Microsoft for people in Microsoft, and for resources for the rest Sponsor: The FreeBSD Foundation for everything else

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

FreeBSD on EC2

Contact: Colin Percival <cperciva@FreeBSD.org>

FreeBSD is available on both amd64 (Intel and AMD) and arm64 (Graviton) EC2 instances.

In the past quarter, a new "small" flavour of EC2 AMI has been added, without debug symbols, tests, 32-bit compatibility libraries, or the LLVM debugger, and without the Amazon SSM Agent pre-installed or the AWS CLI installed by default at first boot.

Build performance tests are now being performed weekly using the snapshot AMIs built by the release engineering team. These tests revealed several performance regressions which have now been fixed; in particular a bug fix to the use of the EFI RNG in the boot loader produced a dramatic speedup on Graviton instances.

Sponsor: Amazon
Sponsor: https://www.patreon.com/cperciva

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

OpenStack on FreeBSD

Links:
OpenStack URL: https://www.openstack.org/
OpenStack on FreeBSD URL: https://github.com/openstack-on-freebsd

Contact: Chih-Hsin Chang <starbops@hey.com>
Contact: Li-Wen Hsu <lwhsu@FreeBSD.org>

The OpenStack on FreeBSD project aims to bring OpenStack cloud infrastructure to the FreeBSD operating system, using FreeBSD’s special features while keeping
it compatible with OpenStack.

In the third quarter of 2024, we continued working on several important tasks. Our work on porting OpenStack Ironic is still ongoing, with tests now running on arm64 servers. In this setup, the service node is amd64, and the provisioning node is arm64. This helps us explore more options for running mixed environments in OpenStack on FreeBSD.

In August, we gave a presentation at COSCUP 2024 to share the project’s progress and our experiences. This helped us get more attention and interest from people in the community.

We also updated some of the OpenStack components, like Keystone, Glance, and Placement, from FreeBSD 14.0-STABLE to FreeBSD 15.0-CURRENT. This update helps us keep up with the latest changes in FreeBSD, making the project run better.

Another notable item was testing the bhyve serial console over TCP patch and using it in the OpenStack workflow. This brings us closer to stopping the use of the custom socat-manager solution and moving to a built-in serial console solution.

Although we are still planning to turn the OpenStack manual installation process into FreeBSD ports, there has not been much progress yet. We hope to work more on this in the next few months. Existing work can be found in the openstack repository.

Sponsor: The FreeBSD Foundation

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Documentation

Noteworthy changes in the documentation tree, manual pages, or new external books/documents.

Documentation Engineering Team

Link: FreeBSD Documentation Project URL: https://www.freebsd.org/docproj/
Link: FreeBSD Documentation Project Primer for New Contributors URL: https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/fdp-primer/
Link: Documentation Engineering Team URL: https://www.freebsd.org/administration/#t-doceng

Contact: FreeBSD Doceng Team <doceng@FreeBSD.org>

The doceng@ team is a body to handle some of the meta-project issues associated with the FreeBSD Documentation Project; for more information, see FreeBSD Doceng Team Charter.

Benedict Reuschling steps down from doceng@. doceng@ would like to thank bcr@ for his service.

Document changes

• Handbook: Document the automatic creation of XDG directories starting with
FreeBSD 14.1. The VNET config example script has been fixed.

• Architecture Handbook: remove K&R prototypes in MAC chapter.

• Website: Some improvements regarding the top banner and layout, visually
rearrange buttons and more.

• Documentation repository: fix of all malformed tables warnings. Removal of
deprecated attributes to conform to new gohugo releases.

FreeBSD Translations on Weblate

Link: Translate FreeBSD on Weblate URL: https://wiki.freebsd.org/Doc/Translation/Weblate
Link: FreeBSD Weblate Instance URL: https://translate-dev.freebsd.org/

Q3 2024 Status

• 17 team languages

• 214 registered users

1 new translator joined Weblate:

• matthew (id)

Languages

• Chinese (Simplified) (zh-cn) (progress: 7%)

• Chinese (Traditional) (zh-tw) (progress: 3%)

• Dutch (nl) (progress: 1%)

• French (fr) (progress: 1%)

• German (de) (progress: 1%)

• Greek (el) (progress: 1%)

• Indonesian (id) (progress: 1%)

• Italian (it) (progress: 5%)

• Korean (ko) (progress: 32%)

• Norwegian (nb-no) (progress: 1%)

• Persian (fa-ir) (progress: 3%)

• Polish (progress: 2%)

• Portuguese (progress: 0%)

• Portuguese (pt-br) (progress: 24%)

• Spanish (es) (progress: 36%)

• Turkish (tr) (progress: 2%)

We want to thank everyone that contributed, translating or reviewing documents.

And please, help promote this effort on your local user group, we always need more volunteers.

Packages maintained by DocEng

During this quarter the following work was done in packages maintained by doceng@:

• textproc/docproj: Bump gohugo dependency to 0.133.1

• www/gohugo: update to 0.134.3

Open issues

There are 2 Open PRs in bugzilla assigned to doceng@:

• 276923 www/gohugo link error under poudriere

• 267274 Please remove the zh-CN Handbook of the current FreeBSD website

During this quarter doceng@ closed 3 PRs:

• 266107 FreeBSD Handbook and other books: PDF: broken links – crossref

• 279815 status reports: ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS

• 281396 handbook: ERROR: <stdin>: line 149: dropping cells from incomplete
row detected

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

FreeBSD Wiki

Links:
FreeBSD wiki front page URL: https://wiki.freebsd.org/FrontPage

Contact: Mark Linimon <linimon@freebsd.org> Contact: Wiki admin < wiki-admin@freebsd.org>

The FreeBSD wiki is a repository of information that does not fit well in the official project documentation because it is too specific, too disparate, or too transient.

Current projects:

Mark Linimon has started attacking various stale pages. The focus has been on pages that we show to new, interested, users. (Recent Foundation newsletters refer to some of these pages directly.) Unfortunately, many of these pages have become stale, to the point where they were actually not good recommendations.

The pages that have received the most work are:

• IdeasPage (referenced in Foundation documentation)

• JuniorJobs (referenced in Foundation documentation)

• SummerOfCodeIdeas

• various pages under CategoryProject

• various pages under CategoryTodo

• MentorMatch

In addition to removing obviously stale entries, all entries have now been datestamped with the time that they were added to the various pages. wiki-admin@ would like to request that we carry forward this tradition into the future.

As well, wiki-admin@ has been sending email to ask committers/contributors to the above pages "should we keep this entry?" This task will continue until the pages have been cleaned up.

(NB: the fact that content in the wiki was stale was mentioned by numerous respondents in the FreeBSD Foundation 2024 Community Survey Report.)

Previous plans that have stalled

Plans are still underway to familiarize our audience on Discord with the wiki (there are too many "silos" in our FreeBSD community). The team has simply not had enough cycles to do this. However, contact Setesh on the FreeBSD Discord for more information.

Preliminary work was being done on updating the wiki software itself. Earlier, we were looking at switching implementations because MoinMoin development seemed to have stalled, leaving us with an unwanted hanging python2 dependency. However, MoinMoin now claims that they are nearing a 2.0 release. We have not yet tried an install of their latest beta version to test compatibility. Testers welcome.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The FreeBSD Russian Documentation Project

Links:
FAQ URL: https://docs.freebsd.org/ru/books/faq/
Handbook URL: https://docs.freebsd.org/ru/books/handbook/
Web URL: https://www.freebsd.org/ru/

Contact: Andrei Zakhvatov <andrey.zakhvatov@gmail.com>

The FreeBSD Russian Documentation Project’s current goal is to provide up-to-date Russian translations of the most important parts of FreeBSD documentation (FAQ, Handbook, Web). It is important to support Russian speakers with high-quality official technical materials and increase acceptance of the operating system around the globe. We hope that this activity will receive some support from the Russian-speaking FreeBSD community and lead to more translated materials.

There is some progress in document translation:

• FAQ: PR #277008 and PR #282062

• Handbook: Chapter 1. Introduction: PR #276334

• Handbook: Chapter 2. Installing FreeBSD: PR #280610

• Handbook: Chapter 3. FreeBSD Basics: PR #282059

Check the official translation guide if you are willing to help. We always appreciate your help with translation of the following materials:

• Handbook chapters and sections

• Articles

• Web pages

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Ports

Changes affecting the Ports Collection, whether sweeping changes that touch most of the tree, or individual ports themselves.

GCC on FreeBSD

Links:
GCC Project URL: https://gcc.gnu.org/
GCC 11 release series URL: https://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-11/
GCC 12 release series URL: https://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-12/
GCC 13 release series URL: https://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-13/
GCC 14 release series URL: https://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-14/

Contact: Lorenzo Salvadore <salvadore@FreeBSD.org>

This quarter the main news is about the new GCC releases:

• lang/gcc11 has been updated to 11.5.0, which is the last GCC 11 planned
released;

• lang/gcc12 has been updated to 12.4.0;

• lang/gcc13 has been updated to 13.3.0;

• lang/gcc14 has been updated to 14.2.0.

The exp-run to update GCC default version from 13 to 14 has started. As usual, thanks to everyone involved.

If you maintain any of the affected ports or want to give a hand preparing and testing some patches, please consider trying adding -fpermissive to CFLAGS in affected ports: GCC 14 has transformed some warnings into errors, which is the cause of many of the failed builds. The -fpermissive flag switches those errors back to warnings.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Freepascal and Lazarus on FreeBSD aarch64

Links:
Freepascal Project URL: https://www.freepascal.org/
Lazarus IDE URL: https://www.lazarus-ide.org/

Contact: José Alonso Cárdenas Márquez <acm@FreeBSD.org>

Free Pascal is a mature, versatile, open source Pascal compiler. It can target many operating systems and processor architectures: Intel x86 (16 and 32 bit), AMD64/x86-64, PowerPC, PowerPC64, SPARC, SPARC64, ARM, AArch64, MIPS, Motorola 68k, AVR, and the JVM. Additionally, support for RISC-V (32/64), Xtensa, and Z80 architectures, and for the LLVM compiler infrastructure is available in the development version. Also, the Free Pascal team maintains a transpiler for pascal to Javascript called pas2js.

Lazarus is a Delphi compatible cross-platform IDE for Rapid Application Development. It has a variety of components ready for use and a graphical form designer to easily create complex graphical user interfaces.

Three years ago, Mikaël Urankar <mikael@FreeBSD.org> began porting the Free Pascal compiler to FreeBSD aarch64 and it was merged into Free Pascal source code (main branch). Some months ago, I added lang/fpc-devel (3.3.1) and editors /lazarus-devel (3.99) to the ports tree only for i386 and amd64 because aarch64 was not ready yet. The binaries generated on aarch64 did not run because of ELF issues. Finally, some days ago the issues were resolved and support for FreeBSD aarch64 was completed.

lang/fpc-devel and editors/lazarus-devel were updated to 3.3.1.20240913 and 3.99.20240913 with support for aarch64 respectively. It brings to FreeBSD users a new language and platform working on FreeBSD aarch64 for console, graphic, or any kind of apps development.

TODO

• Update fpc/lazarus based ports (such as sysutils/bhyvemgr and archivers/
peazip) to support FreeBSD/aarch64

• Push FreeBSD RISC-V support

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Third Party Projects

Many projects build upon FreeBSD or incorporate components of FreeBSD into their project. As these projects may be of interest to the broader FreeBSD community, we sometimes include brief updates submitted by these projects in our quarterly report. The FreeBSD project makes no representation as to the accuracy or veracity of any claims in these submissions.

Containers and FreeBSD: Pot, Potluck and Potman

Links:
Pot organization on GitHub URL: https://github.com/bsdpot

Contact: Luca Pizzamiglio (Pot) <pizzamig@FreeBSD.org>
Contact: Bretton Vine (Potluck) <bv@honeyguide.eu>
Contact: Michael Gmelin (Potman) <grembo@FreeBSD.org>

Pot is a jail management tool that also supports orchestration through Nomad. Potluck aims to be to FreeBSD and Pot (and potentially one day also Podman) what Dockerhub is to Linux and Docker: a repository of container descriptions and complete container images for usage with Pot and in many cases Nomad.

During this quarter, there were two bugfixes to Pot that will be released soon.

Potluck images saw some updates again. All images have been rebuilt again to include the latest fixes and quarterly packages. Additionally, some images like Loki or Vault have also received additional updates and bugfixes.

Also, we have done some research regarding potential future support of OCI, Buildah and Podman images in Potluck. Two blog posts, one describing a basic Buildah and Podman setup and one describing how to orchestrate Podman containers with Nomad and Consul have been published.

As always, feedback and patches are welcome.

Sponsors: Nikulipe UAB, Honeyguide Group

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)