Red Carpet 0.9.2

[Ian Peters <itp ximian com>]

The Internet is like a giant octopus. With its eight tentacles spread
out amongst... No. That's not a good analogy. Oh, here's a good one:
The Internet is like this haystack. A really big one, the size of
Nebraska--no! Kansas. And in this Kansas-sized metaphorical haystack
are these little needles. And these needles are an analogy for
packages. Oh, you know those little things that kids have with the
little shaped blocks? The ones with the square and the circle and
triangular blocks--the kind that help kids with shape recognition and
spatial representation. They have trapezoidal ones too. Pretend that
the needles are instead those shaped blocks. And they have magnetic
properties, so they're probably made of iron or some sort of iron
alloy. Anyway, and you have to get these small blocks out of this big
haystack, right, and put them in this toy thing. And the reward for
learning about shapes is that a TV turns on, so those kids can watch
MTV with their Britney Spears and their Backstreet Boys and other such
noisy nonsense. Anyway, so getting these blocks out of that hay is
hard! Why couldn't you get a Rhode Island-, or even better yet, a
Connecticut-sized magnet to get these blocks out (remember, they have
magnetic properties). Red Carpet is that Connecticut-sized magnet.
You might even say that it's Vermont-sized.

If you read all of that above paragraph, oh dear. Oh dear indeed. I
feel sorry for you. Red Carpet 0.9.2 is out.

ABOUT RED CARPET
================

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 DepTrackTricketyTronTronixTron 30k, our
amazing dependency and conflict resolution system, the nightmare of
dependencies all but vanish from your life. How about THAT for a
magnet!

A SPECIAL (AND HAPPY) RPM 4.0.2 NOTE
====================================

Many people have tried, and failed, to use previous Red Carpet
releases on systems that have RPM 4.0.2 (actually, a pre-release
snapshot) installed. This most likely applies to people who have used
Nautilus PR3 or a Red Hat beta release. You know you're in this group
if, when you use Red Carpet, you experience sudden and violent crashes
when installing or removing packages.

After some intense communication with the maintainer of RPM and some
hard-core debugging from your Red Carpet team, we've arrived at a
technical solution. We've patched the version of RPM 4.0 such that it
will work with RPM 4.0.2 systems as well as RPM 4.0 systems. You may
begin reveling.

BUG FIXES AND NEW FEATURES
==========================

Red Carpet is an organic software project. You might say it is
alive. We will say no such thing, but you might. It is ever improving
with bugs being fixed and features being implemented. Many thanks go
to you, our outstanding users.

In this incarnation of Red Carpet, these bugs have been fixed (Bug
numbers from bugzilla.ximian.com in parentheses):

   * Support for several new platforms, including Mandrake, Caldera
     and SuSE systems (see below)
   * Red Carpet no longer crashes on systems with RPM 4.0.2 (#1433)
   * Red Carpet sets the application's icon correctly (#1662)
   * Categories are ordered in a more logical manner when installing
     and removed (#1769)
   * Minor usability fixes (#1748)
   * Red Carpet now tells you what packages it is in the process of
     installing/removing/upgrading during transactions, where possible
     (#1526)
   * Some obscure counting errors should have been fixed, so you'll no
     longer see 101% done (#1588)
   * RPM errors are reported to the user more accurately and
     completely
   * Dependency resolution failures (missing packages) are now closer
     to human readable
   * The RPM backend will no longer refuse to remove or upgrade
     packages that have slightly corrupted entries in the RPM database
   * And many, many more...

AND YOU MAY ASK YOURSELF, WELL, HOW DO I GET IT?
================================================

Binary packages are available for all currently supported
distributions. If you have the Ximian GNOME Updater, you can get it by
selecting the Red Carpet mirror. 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. It may be necessary
to add the Ximian GNOME apt source line to your sources as well to
satisfy dependencies. Lastly, you can also get them as well as source
tarballs from ftp://ftp.ximian.com/pub/red-carpet .

I FOUND A BUG! I RULE!
======================

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. We also have a mailing list for discussion
and bug reporting so that you can provide a more detailed followup of
your bug reports, like "Vlad bites." You can subscribe to it at
http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/red-carpet .

AVAILABLE CHANNELS
==================

Currently, the following channels are available. Please note that not
all of these channels are available for all distributions. We know
this, and are working on making all of our channels available to
everyone.

   * Ximian GNOME
   * Evolution Snapshots (nightly)
   * Ximian Red Carpet
   * GNOME 1.4 beta
   * (your distribution)

SUPPORTED DISTRIBUTIONS
=======================

Binary packages are available for Red Hat 6.0, 6.1, 6.2 and 7.0;
Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 (potato) and woody; Linux Mandrake 7.0 and 7.1;
SuSE 6.3, 6.4 and 7.0; Caldera OpenLinux eDesktop 2.4.

ON THE STATE OF NOT HAVING A QUESTION AND ANSWER SECTION
========================================================

We believe in branching out, broadening our horizons, and embracing
change. As a result, we wanted to try this new format. We understand
that this goes against tradition, but we're not the traditional sort
of people. Ian, for example, thought it would be cool to have
sauerkraut for Thanksgiving dinner. I like sauerkraut as much as--in
fact, probably more than--the next guy, but... sauerkraut on
Thanksgiving? And no cranberry sauce! But anyway, we like new stuff.

CORRECTIONS
===========

In the last announcement, we may have given the impression that Joe
sucks. This was certainly not our intention, and we apologize to Joe
for insinuating, however unintended. Joe in fact rules.