7 Nazca: Luck runs out?

[electricduck]

If you've been with us long enough (congrats), you'll likely remember #44: we're now once again in the same boat. I love Pantheon, I really do, but the current on-going issues at elementary Inc. is straining its development and has once again landed us in problems.

For some background context, Fedora does not provide Pantheon packages: they instead come from Terra. However, thanks to elementary Inc. now seriously falling behind Mutter versions (which essentially makes Pantheon work) again, Pantheon currently cannot build on Fedora 40 (Sodalite 7 Nazca to us).

I was alerted to this issue on Fyra Labs' Discord a few days ago. Here is the message:

Fedora 40 is coming in a few days, but I'm afraid it's impossible for us (Terra) to maintain Elementary and Pantheon packages.

1. Elementary has been failing to maintain their Pantheon and related software so as to support the latest versions of dependencies, namely mutter 14. I've looked into their latest commits and have yet to find any software that actually supports mutter 14. We can literally do nothing — there aren't even patches.
   • Mutter 14 is provided by Fedora upstream repos. We have no control over the version of Mutter.
   • We've already considered the possibility of providing a separate mutter package with version 13, but we've determined that it'll probably cause too much conflicts between packages and is too much of a hazzle.
2. There are packages on Fedora that conflicts with Terra. You heard me, somehow there is some package maintainers out there in Pantheon SIG that decides to add back Pantheon packages causing file conflicts on current Pantheon installation (via Terra), and we've already received numerous reports from our Ultramarine Pantheon users regarding failure to update their system. In particular, the most important package in concern is wingpanel, wingpanel-devel on Fedora, which conflicts with wingpanel, wingpanel-libs and wingpanel-devel on Terra.
   • I don't really know how I should put this but first of all it literally doesn't make sense to provide Pantheon packages if they aren't going to even get Pantheon onto Fedora. It's been like 2 releases and they have been partially removing stuff and adding stuff back, causing breakages on Terra + Panthoen systems. I know, we are a third-party repository, blah blah blah… But seriously to me, that's just dead evil.
   • Second of all, they are providing nightly versions (git commits) as opposed to stable ones on Terra. I have no idea what they're doing.

Anyway, we've tried. It doesn't really work, we don't have the resources, we don't have the manpower, I don't think we can make it. Our team is currently acking on removing Ultramarine Pantheon in UM40, but since I reckon this will probably significantly affect Sodalite, I'm here to just inform you first before we make this official.

So here's what's going to happen:

• All Pantheon packages that have been successfully built on Terra will stay. This applies to all releasevers.
• All Pantheon packages that do not build will not be actively maintained by us. If there's a new version and our autoupdate system bumps it and it builds, then it builds. If upstream Elementary does nothing and doesn't update, then things will stay as is.
• That means if Pantheon doesn't support Mutter 14, it won't be in Terra. If it supports Mutter 14, then it probably will be in Terra.

As an insight as to how bad things are getting, there is an open issue for Mutter 14 on Wingpanel's issue tracker that literally hasn't even been reacted to.

So... what happens now?

Currently, nothing.

6 Kutai (f39) is currently supported until 12-Nov-2024, with an upcoming minor version (6.1 Fremont) due soon. Worth pointing out 5.1 Varri (f38) is nearing EoL (14-May-2024): this will only concern you if you're on the long-5 branch.

Essentially, unless you absolutely need something in Fedora 40, we'll be okay until the end of this year. However, unless this ticket is resolved by then, we have two choices:

1. Admit defeat: this is the end of Sodalite
   Pantheon is fantastic, but honestly, elementary Inc. has turned into a giant mess that is incapable of keeping up (and, hell, Mutter 13 won't be around in Ubuntu much longer). Not feeling comfortable at all with the prospect of people using 6.x after EoL, the repos will be gutted and you'll be advised to move to something else (rpm-ostree making this a breeze!)
2. Turn to GNOME
   "Huh, really?" I hear you say, "We already have Silverblue, no?". While that is true, the reason Sodalite exists in the first place is because:
      • I enjoy the prospect of maintaining my own distro to use across my machines
      • We need more independent Fedora-based distros that aren't official spins
      • We have more control over including non-free packages at install (which Fedora Spins do not allow)
   ...so an independent small version of Fedora with a few changes (but not too much!) wouldn't go amiss. A GNOME version is already buried in the codebase (its been built to be fairly modular). Other avenues could be explored in the future too.

However, if Pantheon is to support Mutter 14 by then, 7 Nazca will be released. But, honestly, I don't personally hold out much hope of that.

Hold tight 🤞