Bootable GNOME images available

[Tristan Van Berkom <tristan vanberkom codethink co uk>]

Hi all,

    It's my pleasure to announce that we are now producing bootable
images based on the very latest of GNOME modules as defined by the
gnome-build-meta[1] (which we also use to build the releases and
produce the GNOME flatpak runtime/sdk).

At this time, the image is recreated every time the gitlab pipeline
runs, and can be downloaded from gitlab here[2].

The image comes with a simple launcher script for qemu, and should boot
up to the gnome-initial-setup[3] tool automatically.


Next steps
~~~~~~~~~~
The current setup still leaves much to be desired, and we're hoping
others will pitch in and help improve our CI story.

The next big task ahead of us is to boot the image in CI and perform
automated tests on it, most probably with openQA, you can follow that
issue here[4].

Of course there are many other things to accomplish:

  * Allow atomic upgrades with ostree, which requires some system
    integration work and also requires that we publish the builds in a
    publicly hosted ostree repository.

  * Currently we only build the image for 64bit intel, but we should
    be able to boot for the 4 architectures we already support for the
    GNOME Flatpak SDKs (i686, x86_64, armv7, aarch64).

  * Improve system integration in general, ensure input methods are
    working, online accounts are integrated properly, keyring unlocks
    with user login, etc.

  * Run installed tests as a part of the CI pipeline before wrapping
    the image itself.

  * The list goes on and on :)


If you'd like to help out but need some pointers getting familiar with
the gnome-build-meta project, feel free to ask Javier or myself, and
other release team members should also be capable of pointing you in
the right direction.


Finally, thanks to everyone on the release team and also freedesktop-sdk
project contributors who have helped immensely to get us this far !

Cheers,
    -Tristan


[1]: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-build-meta
[2]: 
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-build-meta/-/jobs/artifacts/master/browse/image/?job=build-gnome-core-x86_64
[3]: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-initial-setup
[4]: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-build-meta/issues/206