Writing Spells

If you are interested in becoming a Source Mage developer you should learn how to write spells. If not an apprentice, you may want to learn how to write your own spells because you couldn't find a program you need in Source Mage. Here are a couple of ways to get started.

There is a wiki page on sourcemage.org called Spell Writing For Dummies. This is a good way to start to learn the intricacies of spell writing. The good part is you can do this on your local machine without affecting anyone else. So you can make all the mistakes you want while you learn.

Another way to start writing spells is to use a tool that has been created just for that purpose. The tool is called Quill. It has been created and updated by the Source Mage developers to make it easier to write spells. If you want to know when and what things have been added to Quill, here is the location of the changelog. To obtain a better explanation of Quill and all of it's features, I did a "gaze what quill" in my shell. Here is the result.

quill:
An interactive spell generator and updater script. It's meant to eventually become the be-all for spell manipulation. It has support for moving the working copy of the spell around, so any lacking features can easily be circumvented manually (the old way).

Current set of features:
* spell creation with different levels of complexity (see quill -h)
* full fledged update mode that checks new urls and downloads the sources
* freshmeat metadata fetching for quicker work
* perl cpan metadata fetching for quicker work
* ruby-raa metadata fetching for quicker work
* copying the spell from and back to the grimoire
* copying the spell from and back to a local git grimoire (any scm actually)
* casting of the spell
* creating a tarball out of it for easy submission
* SOURCE and SOURCE_URL unexpansion, so later updates will be easy
* substitution of source urls with known mirror and spell variables
* dumping of default_build and similar functions for custom spell files
* sudo support for the copying cases where root privileges are required

Update mode highlights:
* url checking that also tries substituting the suffixes on failure (bz2<->gz)
* some multiversion support
* automatic HISTORY updates
* simple and automatically style-conformant adding of arbitrary HISTORY entries
* automatic removal of deprecated variables like UPDATED and MD5
* automatic removal of old signature files and PATCHLEVEL
* hash and gpg verification support on spell udpates
* patchlevel handling

If you want to use Quill, just cast it like you would any other program and your ready to go. Hopefully this will at least point you in the right direction to begin writing your own spells for Source Mage. As always, you can get answers to any questions you might have in the #SourceMage IRC channel on Freenode or on the SM-Discuss mailing list. Now go forth young mage and conjure spells!

New Cauldron Lead

Karsten Behrmann has been elected to another term as Cauldron Team Lead. His first term was not the normal full year term. The previous Cauldron Lead stepped down before the term was up and Karsten was voted in to fill the position. With nominations closed today, he was the only nominee. Congratulations Karsten! Give us a good year!

Xorg-modular Spell

Grimoire Lead Eric Sandall has sent a message to the SM-Discuss and SM-Users mailing lists yesterday about the Xorg-modular spell. There has been some confusion about this spell, for those who know about it. Questions like, what is modular for?

From my understanding, this is the way X.Org wants to go, modular. I found a modular proposal on the X.Org Wiki. Here is an exert from the introduction.

"Traditionally, the X Window System source code has been comprised of many different components that are brought together into a single monolithic source tree. We propose to split the tree into logical modules that can be developed, built and maintained separately, but still fit together coherently into the larger source code base as they have in the monolithic tree."

If you follow the link I provided above for the modular proposal it explains much more.

A spell for Xorg-modular has existed for some time now for Source Mage. It is in early development. To advance development on this spell, Sandall sent the aforementioned message.

"I have created a master Bug #13845[0] to track getting xorg-modular into test. Please file one bug per spell that is missing any of the following:

* Descriptions in DETAILS
* Dependency descriptions
* Missing dependencies
* Missing check_if_xorg_modular* dependencies
* Incorrect symlinks (e.g. /etc/X11R6)
* Broken defaults
* Unclear descriptions

And mark them as blocking Bug #13845 (be kind to those tracking the bugs and do a search before filing). Do not feel as though you need to *fix* these bugs, just file a bug when you find it so that those with the time (and inclination ;)) can easily track what needs to be done. I hope that we can integrate xorg-modular to test in the next month."


I hope this will help answer some questions about Xorg-modular. If you have any questions, please feel free to visit the #SourceMage IRC channel at irc.freenode.net or send a message to one of the mailing lists.

Stable Grimoire 0.11 Released

A new stable Grimoire was recently released by the Source Mage Development Team. This version is 0.11. Information on how to obtain this Grimoire was posted on the SMGL web site. Grimoire Lead Eric Sandall stated the following about this release.

"Stable grimoire version 0.11 has been released! Users of stable merely need to run 'sorcery system-update'. Spells listed on the release wiki[0] were tested and qualified to have no known defects of "gating" severity at the time of this release.

I would like to thank Juuso Alasuutari, George Sherwood, Thomas Orgis, and Jaka Kranjc for their help on this release."

Double, double toil and trouble

You guessed it, the time has come to vote for Cauldron Team Lead. Cauldron is the installer and ISO generation component of Source Mage. Find out more about the Cauldron Team here. Voting is conducted using the SM-Discuss mailing list.

Here are the general voting rules.

All nominations, motions, seconds, votes, etc. MUST be GPG-signed by the Developer's GPG key as recorded at keysigning to be valid. If you're not listed bug someone to list your key there.

a) Nominations WILL last for one week from the time the call for
nominations is sent.
b) Nominations MUST be sent to the Mailing List.
c) The nomination MUST be seconded within one week of being made.
d) The nomination MUST be accepted within one week of being made.
e) Accepting nominees SHOULD send a message to the list explaining why they are running for the position and why people might want to elect them.

Voting is being managed by Andraž "ruskie" Levstik this time. He is the Source Mage GNU Linux Games grimoire guru.
Good luck to the participants!

Five Quick Tips

Here are five brief answers to random questions that are asked often when someone is new to Source Mage GNU Linux.

Question: Does Source Mage use Gnome or KDE?
Answer: Source Mage doesn't use either one by default. It gives you the choice to use whatever you like. When the installation is finished, you are left with a base system. You will need to install and configure Xorg yourself. Then you can install a desktop system or window manager of your choice.

Question: How do I install a program?
Answer: To install a program use the cast command. For example: cast programname
There are several options to the cast command. You can find these options in the cast man page. Cast takes care of dependicies automatically. You can read more about cast here.

Question: How do I uninstall a program?
Answer: To uninstall use the command dispel. There is a man page available for this command too. Read more information here.

Question: How do I compile my kernel?
Answer: As the root user, use this command: cast -r linux
More information is available here. If you do not want a custom kernel, there is a pre-compiled kernel available when installing Source Mage.

Question: How do I update software on my computer?
Answer: Use this command: sorcery system-update

SMGL at DistroWatch

One of the developers mentioned the SMGL DistroWatch page had not been updated to the new ISO version which is now 0.9.6.3. So I put on my Dick Tracy hat and investigated. I was preparing myself for a more detailed investigation, but the investigation ended before it really began. After I strolled into the #SourceMage IRC Channel and started asking some questions, it seems the e-mail to inform DistroWatch had never been sent. At least that made it easy, because I just sent an e-mail to DistroWatch myself informing them of the update. Maybe in the future I'll have a better detective story for you.

Keep It Stable

Work has begun on a new Stable release. A recent message was sent by Grimoire Lead, Eric Sandall.

"The stable-rc-0.11 tarball and git branch have been out since June 1 with a few integrations already requested, approved, and integrated. I have just now finalized this releases shepherder, Juuso Alasuutari (iuso). A chroot should be up fairly soon for you to start testing, but feel free to start signing up for your favourite packages. :) Keep in mind that this release has a few extra packages."

The SMGL Developers are already hard at work, since Stable Grimoire 0.10 was released in May.

In other news, Source Mage Developer Andrew Stitt has agreed to do an interview with MagePower. Don't miss it!

Developer Meeting 5-19-2007

The latest Source Mage Developer Meeting was in May. Here is a basic summary of the discussion. The meeting started with the Grimoire.

The topic of devel branches were discussed. Sandalle stated "With the awesome way git does branching, there is no point I am aware of to keep a huge devel repo that's synced to test sporadically. Instead we should be using local branches for quick WIPs and remote devel- branches for longer WIPs (e.g. shadow, selinux, openoffice).". Git is used for the revision control system in SMGL. Find out more about Git here. To find out how to use it for SMGL, visit the SMGL Git Guide.

In the latest Stable release, support was needed to help test it and prepare it. Participation was fairly low, so there was discussion of ways to improve participation.

Another Grimoire topic was the Grimoire Guru Handbook policy. Sandalle would like to have a policy for who is allowed to update the GGH and what approval process is required. They decided this would be better discussed in the mailing list SM-Discuss.

Emrys wanted to know who was going to do the bug clean-up since the Stable Grimoire 0.10 Release. lynxlynxlynx explained he had already finished the clean-up.

Emrys remembered he forgot to do the vote for Cauldron Lead in this month. The vote will happen in the near future. Cauldron is Source Mage's installer and ISO generation scripts component.
Emrys then gave a summary of what he has worked on lately. "Well as for what I've been up to...I spent a lot of time working on getting better automated monitoring and mirroring working. I got that far enough to be almost done, then realized some problems with it before putting it all in place, around the time work got busy.
So right now we have two current download sites that don't mirror but can be manually failed over, which is at least better than we were. Anyway that's all taken longer than I wanted but once it's done I still plan to work on some proof of concept iso stuff and after that, doc/wiki systems stuff. But that's all mostly in the realm of the future. The other thing I've been doing recently is getting docs and checklists and structure in place to make sure Eric/etc can do all the grimoire git stuff again, I think that's in place so I doubt I'll be missed. Oh another thing on my list is updating all the web stuff and making sure it's from spells; we got Drupal done, Bugzilla and Moin are next. I want to do some serious work on bugzilla when I do that but would really love someone else to volunteer and do it all."

BearPerson then stepped in and talked a little about Cauldron. "We have stuff in git and notes on the wiki about how to create an ISO, but they are not entirely complete yet and nobody has to my knowledge tried creating an ISO from them yet. There should however, by my guess, work to create a bootable ISO with a bootable basic-system tarball, just the installation instructions are severely lacking so far. I'm afraid my time is currently being eaten by a uni job I have, I'll see how much I can squeeze into getting a basic proof-of-concept ISO soon."

That basically sums up the meeting. The next meeting is scheduled to be held in a couple months. MagePower will have the date posted as it gets closer.

Kick Off!

Welcome to MagePower! This site will be devoted to Source Mage GNU Linux. Source Mage is a source-based GNU/Linux distribution based on a Sorcery metaphor of "casting" and "dispelling" programs, which are referred to as "spells", and a package manager called "Sorcery". You can find out much more at the official SMGL web site. MagePower will include SMGL news, developer interviews, how-to's and more. Many people have complained in the past about a lack of news on the latest happenings with Source Mage. I hope MagePower will help remedy that.