Allan McRae
allanmcrae.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2010
Allan McRae, an Arch Linux developer and pacman maintainer, writes about packaging, toolchains, and Arch Linux releases.
What HN saysHN links his posts on pacman package signing, security issue handling in distributions like Manjaro, and debate over what defines Arch Linux.
20HN people shared it
7linked it in comments
13stories submitted
129story points
6 years agolast shared
2010people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Package signing comes to Archlinux4 people · 3 points · first shared 2011 · discussion on HN
- 2Big Python Transition In Arch Linux2 people · 2 points · first shared 2010 · 1 comments on HN
- 3Pacman-5.0 Released1 people · 66 points · first shared 2016 · 49 comments on HN
- 4The Case of GCC-5.1 and the Two C++ ABIs1 people · 40 points · first shared 2015 · 59 comments on HN
- 5Package signing comes to Pacman Arch Linux1 people · 3 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
- 6Arch Linux's pacman preparing 6.0 release with parallel downloads1 people · 2 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 7Battle of the Arch Spin-Offs1 people · 2 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
- 8Pacman 5.2 Release (Archlinux)1 people · 2 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 9Pacman-4.1 Released1 people · 2 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 10Distri – Comparing Apples and Oranges? – Allan McRae1 people · 2 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 11How Secure Is The Source Code?1 people · 2 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
- 12Windows Service Center.1 people · 2 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
- 13Pacman 5.11 people · 1 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 14Are we removing what defines arch linux1 people · first shared 2012
- 15Pacman package signing 2 pacman key1 people · first shared 2011
What HN people wrote when they linked it
creshal · 2015-04-09
Manjaro had a rather… iffy relationship with developing a security mindset in the past: http://allanmcrae.com/2013/10/comparison-of-security-issue-handling/
It appears they're not learning.
sciurus · 2012-08-15
Allen McRae had an interesting, relvant post recently- "Are We Removing What Defines Arch Linux?"
http://allanmcrae.com/2012/08/are-we-removing-what-defines-arch-linux/
Nic0 · 2011-11-01
Allan McRae (pacman developer) done some good writing about the signing package of Pacman on his blog, in three parts.
- http://allanmcrae.com/2011/08/pacman-package-signing-1-makepkg-and-rep…
- http://allanmcrae.com/2011/08/pacman-package-signing-2-pacman-key/
- http://allanmcrae.com/2011/08/pacman-package-signing-3-pacman/
hwkns · 2011-09-17
Package signing is in the works: http://allanmcrae.com/2011/08/pacman-package-signing-3-pacman/
ga2arch · 2011-09-14
It seems things are changing http://allanmcrae.com/2011/08/pacman-package-signing-3-pacman/
Mithrandir · 2010-10-20
Interesting discussions on it at: http://tinyurl.com/2cepr72 and http://tinyurl.com/25pgqql
More in-depth post at: http://allanmcrae.com/2010/10/big-python-transition-in-arch-linux/
Seems there's not a lot of uproar or cheering on it (though it depends on who's doing the posting.)
keithpeter · 2014-04-09
But can we still have the CV numbers as well please.
"The security community refers to vulnerabilities by numbers, not names. This does have some advantages, like precision and the ability to Google them and get meaningful results all of the time"
I wish everyone embedded a Dewey Decimal number into their factual pages. Would be ace.
"I saw some kvetching on Twitter to the effect that the logo designer heard about Heartbleed before the distribution maintainers at e.g. Ubuntu and RedHat did."
Updates for Debian and CentOS landed within hours. Would have been nice to have them as we read the page.
Interestingly nothing (apparent) for Manjaro yet. Manjaro is a staged version of Arch which I have installed on a test machine to sample Gnome 3.12 when it lands in the repository a week or so.
[keith@mocha ~]$ openssl version
OpenSSL 1.0.1f 6 Jan 2014
Sort of ties in with
http://allanmcrae.com/2013/01/manjaro-linux-ignoring-security-for-stab…
perhaps. I get the impression that Manjaro (and other similar client OSes) are mainly for end users and not on servers.