Last we heard from the Mageia project we were told to expect a test release by the end of January. Well, here it is February, where’s our test release? What’s going on?
According to a new blog post, bootstrapping has been going on. As anyone who has ever built a Gentoo system knows, bootstrapping is building your new system so you can build your new system. In the case of Gentoo, users would download a pre-built build system, the package manager, and the Portage tree. Then one would use that to re-build each of packages needed to comprise the toolchain. Once GCC, make, and friends are built and installed anew, then one can begin building other packages such as the kernel, the X server, and so on.
This is what’s been happening at Mageia for the last month or so. Anne Nicolas said it’s taken over 1,500 hours to bring the build system up to speed. They started with Mandriva packages with the branding removed and now have a pure Mageia system ready to go. “[The] Repository is ready for first build tests, our build machine for ISOs is properly configured,” said Nicolas. Then came the answer to the original question. “Alpha1 is expected on 15th of February.”
Hmm, for more explanation, see Nicolas post at Mageia Blog