[Devel] New Apertis v2021pre.0 preview release available

[Emanuele Aina]

Hello everyone,
 the new Apertis v2021pre.0 preview release is now available!

Apertis v2021pre.0 is the preview release of the Apertis
v2021 stable release flow that will lead to the LTS Apertis v2021.0
release in March 2021.

For more details about the Apertis release flows and support periods,
see https://www.apertis.org/designs/release-flow/

You can find the full release notes at
https://www.apertis.org/release/v2021pre/releasenotes/

Some highlights from this release:

* Technology preview: Maynard and the AGL compositor

A new Wayland compositor and shell are available in the Apertis package
repository, providing on of the fundamental components described in the
application framework concept document.

* Resilient upgrades with atomic rollback on Renesas R-Car

Automatic updates with rollbacks are now enabled and regularly tested
on the supported Renesas R-Car boards.

* Signed metadata verification for offline updates

Apertis contributed upstream to OSTree the ability to protect the
static bundle superblock and the updated implementation is now
available in the Apertis package repository. 

* Long term reproducibility of image builds

The plan defined in the long term reproducibility document is now fully
implemented. 

* Better downstream customizability of GitLab pipelines

The recipes have been modularized to make downstream customization
require much less effort in the long run.

* Dynamic KVM/UML backend selection in Debos

Debos can now automatically detect when KVM is available and use it to
provide faster builds, falling back to UML only when necessary.

* Concept for license-compliant TLS stack

A new document provides an analysis of the licensing challenges with
the current TLS stacks and defines a way forward. 

* Contribution process and templates

New guides are available for anybody who wants to join Apertis.


Note that this release contains some known regressions due to the 5.9
kernel. An update is expected to be released in January with the final
linux 5.10 LTS kernel which fixes all the identified issues.


Images already available for download at
https://images.apertis.org/release/v2021pre/v2021pre.0/

Thanks to everyone who contributed!

-- 
Emanuele Aina
www.collabora.com