The FESCo (Fedora Engineering Steering Committee), responsible for the technical aspects of the Fedora Linux distribution development, has approved an exception to the rules that allows the inclusion of an executable file and libraries compiled for the macOS platform within the asahi-installer package. The exception was granted at the request of the developers of the Fedora Asahi Remix edition, intended for installation on Mac computers equipped with Apple Silicon ARM chips.
Instead of the standard Anaconda installer used by Fedora, the Fedora Asahi Remix employs its own asahi-installer. The installation process for Fedora Asahi Remix is initiated from the existing macOS operating system on the Mac computer, for which the asahi-installer includes an application that runs from macOS and recoveryOS (a stripped-down macOS environment). In addition to this application, the installer also contains a module written in Python, used for extracting and staging firmware. The package for the firmware unpacking module has already been accepted into the Fedora repository, but the inclusion of the actual installer package is hindered by the need to incorporate executable files compiled for the macOS platform.
Since the installer is written in Python, it requires a Python interpreter and the libffi library for its operation in macOS, with their source code provided under open licenses. As building these components for macOS from source in a Linux environment is problematic, the developers of Fedora Asahi Remix requested an exception to the rules allowing them to include the already compiled Python interpreter for macOS (python-3.9.6-macos11.pkg) and the libffi library (libffi-3.4.6-macos.tar.gz) in the asahi-installer package. Adding these files to the source package of the installer will enable the use of the standard Fedora infrastructure for building the installer, rather than relying on precompiled third-party components from the Asahi Linux project.
The packaging guidelines for Fedora stipulate that all binary files of programs and libraries included in the final packages must be built from the source code provided in the source code package. This requirement arises because binary files may contain hidden functionality or malicious modifications, making it difficult to verify their integrity and impossible to apply fixes through patches. Additionally, binary executables and libraries may be compiled without using the prescribed compilation flags in Fedora, which include certain protection and optimization mechanisms.
Source: opennet.ru
