Red Carpet 0.9.1 is released

[Ian Peters <itp ximian com>]

WHEN in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to
dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to
assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which
the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent Respect to the
Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel
them to the Separation.

WE hold these Truths to be self-evident. Red Carpet 0.9.1 is out.

Red Carpet is the next generation Ximian updater and software management
application. Based around the concept of "channels", or content groupings, Red
Carpet will be able to present you with a virtually endless array of software
for your GNU/Linux and Unix systems. In addition to simply updating packages
already installed on your system, Red Carpet allows you to install new
software packages and remove existing software from your system. Red Carpet
works seamlessly with your existing packaging tools on both RPM and
dpkg-based systems, giving you a consistent interface for managing your
software. And, with DepTricketyTrackTronTronixTronTron 12000, our amazing
dependency and conflict resolution system, the nightmare of dependencies all
but vanish from your life. Let there be light!

A NOTE TO THOSE OF YOU RUNNING NAUTILUS PR3 OR THE RED HAT PRE-7.1
BETAS... YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE:

Both Nautilus PR3 (0.8) and the Red Hat 7.1 betas require and install a
pre-release version of RPM 4.0.2, which damages the RPM database. Red Carpet
is statically linked with RPM 4.0, the latest released and supported version
of RPM, and will not work if you have RPM 4.0.2 installed. So for the time
being, you guys are out of luck. We are currently working with the RPM and
Nautilus maintainers to resolve the situation. Hopefully a fix will soon be
available to repair your corrupted database, at which point Red Carpet will
function properly.

As before, the question-and-answer format will be used for the remainder of
this announcement.

Q. What's the deal with 0.9.1?
A. RC 0.9.1 fixes several bugs present in 0.9. Here is a list of bugs fixed,
   with their bug number in the Ximian Bugzilla (http://bugzilla.ximian.com)
   if applicable.

   * Dependencies are now done on a "partial tree" basis instead of over the
     whole system. This will lead to much less fascist enforcement of packages
     to be added or removed when they have no relation to the packages
     actually requested for installation/upgrade. (#1417)
   * The user is asked for proxy information the first time he or she runs
     the app, a la the Ximian Updater. (#1602)
   * Red Carpet no longer uses 100% CPU when a transfer is paused. (#1423)
   * Red Carpet now displays an error box when the user's distribution or
     architecture cannot be determined instead of bailing out with a glib
     error. (#1425)
   * The option of clearing the cache at startup is now off by default
     (#1448). Users of 0.9 will still have to turn it off manually, however.
   * The cache path is now saved. (#1467)
   * The text in the General tab of the Preferences window on the
     "Pretty Package Names" checkbox was being clipped for any reasonably
     sized fonts. The developer responsible uses small fonts. As a result, he
     now has poor eyesight. (#1442)
   * The code behind-the-scenes of downloading, verifying, transacting, and
     configuring packages is now more sane, and more information is provided
     about what is being installed, removed, etc.

   In addition, the following new features have been added. Yippy!

   * The currently installed version of a package is listed as well as the
     version of the package being requested is shown in the package
     information window (#1421)
   * Packages saved on your local file system can be installed. Select
     "Install Local Packages" from the File menu.

Q. Before, Red Carpet wanted to remove 47 packages totally unrelated to the
   5 I was trying to update! What gives?
A. As mentioned above, Red Carpet previously tried to ensure that your
   packaging database was in a consistent state (that is, all the
   dependencies verified). Empirical evidence shows us that this isn't
   very realistic and that you should all be ashamed for doing --nodeps and
   --force on your packages. However, through all of our toil, ultimately we
   strive to make you happy, and so this is no longer required. Your whole 
   system is still verified, however, when you select "Verify Installed
   Packages" from the File menu, and we recommend that everyone do this for
   great justice.

Q. How do I get it?
A. Binary packages for Red Hat Linux 6.x, Red Hat Linux 7.0, and 
   Debian GNU/Linux systems are currently available. For Red Hat, you can
   get it from the Red Carpet mirror in the Ximian GNOME Updater. For Debian
   users, add this line to your /etc/apt/sources.list:

   deb ftp://spidermonkey.ximian.com/pub/red-carpet/binary/debian-22-i386/ ./

   and apt-get update and apt-get install red-carpet.

   You can also get them, as well as the source tarball, from
   ftp://ftp.ximian.com/pub/red-carpet. Packages for the other Linux
   distributions that we support will be out shortly. Beta distributions such
   as Red Hat 7.1, Linux Mandrake 8.0, and SuSE 7.1 are not yet supported.

Q. BUG! BUG! BUG! BUG! BUG! Hahahahahaha!
A. If you find a bug, please make a reasonable effort to check that it has 
   not already been reported in the Ximian Bugzilla at 
   http://bugzilla.ximian.com and if not, report a new one. We also have our 
   RC discussion mailing list where you can give a more detailed followup of
   your bug reports such as, "Joe, you totally suck!". You can subscribe to 
   it at http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/red-carpet.

Q. I installed the Red Hat RPMs on my (insert distribution here) distribution.
   Will it work?
A. We have working channels set up for most of our supported distributions,
   but due to subtleties between them, this isn't recommended. It might work,
   it might not work, we dunno. Don't bother, though, if you're running a
   beta distro like RH 7.1 or Mandrake 8.0. They are usually broken and
   supporting them is more trouble than they are worth.

Q. Why isn't this announcement as funny as the last one?
A. Is anything really as funny as the original? Was Survivor 2: The
   Australian Outback as funny as the first one? Was Police Academy: Mission 
   to Moscow (IMDB's 28th worst movie of all time) really as funny as the 
   first, ten years prior? Could Millard Fillmore, the United States' 13th 
   president really generate as much raucous laughter from the American
   people as William Henry Harrison, the 9th US president? Certainly
   not. QED.

Q. Were there any errors in the last announcement that you would like to
   correct now?
A. Yes, the announcement said "seemlessly" originally, which everyone knows
   isn't a real word. Also, Tuomas Kuosmanen's name was incorrectly spelled.
   It is spelled "Tigert". Many apologies to him.

-- 
Ian Peters      "...it is 5 am and the sun has charred the other
itp gnu org      side of the earth and come back to us and painted
itp ximian com   the smoke over our heads an imperial violet..."