Fedora Linux 8550 Published by

The Fedora Project is officially launching Fedora Pre-Extras, to work alongside Fedora Core 3 for i386 and x86_64 based platforms.



What is Pre-Extras?
It is our way of showing you that we've been working hard, as many packages have been built, and are ready for distribution.

We are working very hard to make the build system work well, and the infrastructure for this is almost ready, it just has a few kinks that we are ironing out. As a measure of good faith, CVS for both Core and Extras has already been opened.

While waiting for Extras to officially launch, use Pre-Extras today!

Where did all these packages come from?
These were packages from the now-merged Fedora.us repository as well as freshrpms.net repository. So they maintain the same high quality standards that was imposed previously.

So how do I get it?
Pre-Extras is currently hosted on the FedoraProject.org website, and is available at:

http://fedoraproject.org/pre-extras/3/

It is available as a YUM repository, and an entry like the following would suffice (in /etc/yum.conf):

[pre-extras]
name=Pre Extras
baseurl=http://fedoraproject.org/pre-extras/3/$basearch/
gpgcheck=1

There is a temporary Pre Extras GPG key, which all packages are signed with. The fingerprint:

pub 1024D/1AC70CE6 2004-12-14 Fedora Pre Extras Release pre-extras@fedoraproject.org
Key fingerprint = 5389 DD00 C5BC 5168 12B4 3272 82ED 9504 1AC7 0CE6
sub 1024g/4E1A9D43 2004-12-14

To import the key:
rpm --import http://fedoraproject.org/pre-extras/RPM-GPG-KEY-Fedora-Pre-Ex
tras

What about bugs?
If you find bugs in the packages, report them at the Fedora Extras Bugzilla:

http://bugzilla.redhat.com/beta/

A cautionary note...
To paraphrase a Fedora Project contributor, Jef Spaleta, these packages could eat babies; that is to say, they are built, signed, and ready for use, but they have not gone through the rigorous QA testing that would be expected normally from Extras. So if they break, submit a bug report, but there are no implied warranties or guarantees that they will work. Use these packages at your own risk!