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+#+TITLE: April 2021 News Post
+#+DATE: <2021-04-15 Thu>
+#+AUTHOR: Cem Keylan
+
+Greetings from the cruellest month of the year! We have some important
+topics this month that I wanted to share with you.
+
+#+TOC: headlines 1 local
+
+* CPT version 6 Release
+:PROPERTIES:
+:CUSTOM_ID: cpt-version-6-release
+:END:
+
+I have released the version 6 of our package manager and did a few bugfix
+releases, which contained a variety of changes made since December. The
+[[https://fossil.carbslinux.org/cpt/log][Changelog]] details them on our new Fossil repository, which I will be talking
+about more on a later section of this post.
+
+As I have mentioned on the [[file:20210303.org::#next-release-for-cpt][previous news post]], I was holding the release for a
+few bugfixes, and documentation. The documentation is complete enough to be
+shipped, but there are still some things to add. The manual pages, and the
+documentation for the user tools, however, are considered complete.
+
+* New rootfs tarball
+
+A new tarball has been released after almost 7 months! This tarball targets the
+=x86_64= architecture, and can be installed following the instructions.
+
+** Signing Releases
+
+Releases are now signed with the OpenBSD tool [[https://man.openbsd.org/signify][signify(1)]] instead of GnuPG. There
+are two packages on our repository that provide this tool, [[carbs-pkg:core/otools][otools]], and [[carbs-pkg:extra/signify][signify]].
+Debian-based distributions usually provide it under =signify-openbsd=, and other
+distributions provide it as just =signify=. Each release will have a different
+public key, those can be found on [[https://dl.carbslinux.org/keys]]. Since the
+public keys are so small, I will also be embedding the latest release key to the
+README file of the package repository, and the installation manual.
+
+** The state of i686
+
+As you may have noticed, I haven't made a release for the =i686= architecture
+this time. I won't be retiring it, but my old laptop, which was the reason I
+initially ported Carbs Linux to the architecture in the first place, has stopped
+working. I won't be retiring it just now, but I also don't see anyone else
+interested in it. If you are interested in taking the maintainership for the
+architecture, you can send a mail to the mailing-list. Otherwise, I will be
+dropping the architecture by the end of June.
+
+* Fossil
+
+I have recently been toying around with the alternate version control system,
+[[https://fossil-scm.org][Fossil]]. Since no Carbs Linux News Post is complete without some sort of
+repository migration[fn:1], the canonical repository of the package manager has
+been moved to Fossil on [[https://fossil.carbslinux.org/cpt]]. However, this doesn't
+mean that the mailing-list on Sourcehut will be removed, those will be in place
+until I decide to serve mailing lists on our own server.
+
+As time goes on, I am also planning on switching some other repositories to
+Fossil as well. I will be switching the Documentation repository next, and the
+Package repository when Fossil support is added to the package manager.
+
+** Fossil support on the package manager
+
+Right now, the package manager supports Git, Mercurial, and Rsync repositories.
+I do want to add Fossil repository support, however this might take long to
+implement as I will be rewriting the repository backend to simplify and collect
+the operations made by the package manager to manage package repositories.
+
+I'm aiming for a new system that makes it easy and simple to manage repositories
+outside of the package manager's scope as well. These changes can be followed
+from the [[https://fossil.carbslinux.org/cpt/timeline?r=repository-backend][repository-backend]] branch, which as of the time of writing this blog
+post, contains no new check-ins, and specifically the status of Fossil support
+can be tracked from [[https://fossil.carbslinux.org/cpt/tktview?name=b354510bc3][this ticket]].
+
+* Switching back to LibreSSL
+
+This is the 4th time Carbs Linux is switching SSL providers, but I am planning
+on this to be the final change for the foreseeable future. The reason behind
+this change is pragmatism. Even though BearSSL is sufficient enough to run the
+base, some essential packages (such as Python for its SSL module) depended on
+LibreSSL, meaning that using LibreSSL was mandatory if you weren't simply using
+the bare-minimum. Using 2 separate SSL libraries is pointless when you have the
+option to easily use a single one.
+
+* Consistent communication
+
+I have decided to be more consistent on these news posts, I will try to make
+these every 15th of the month. I have also recently came back to IRC to be as
+active as possible. At least I can always be reached by mail, if all else fails!
+
+See you on the next post!
+
+* Footnotes
+
+[fn:1] "No mention of openbsd on the internet is complete without a long thread
+about source control migration." -- tedu@ [[https://gameoftrees.org]]