go-git: unlocking SHA256-based repository cloning ahead of git v3 by pgomes

Description

The go-git library implements the git internals in pure Go, so that any Go application can handle not only Git repositories, but also lower-level primitives (e.g. packfiles, idxfiles, etc) without needing to shell out to the git binary.

The focus for this Hackweek is to fast track key improvements for the project ahead of the upstream release of Git V3, which may take place at some point next year.

Goals

• Add support for cloning SHA256 repositories.
• Decrease memory churn for very large repositories (e.g. Linux Kernel repository).
• Cut the first alpha version for go-git/v6.

Stretch goals

• Review and update the official documentation.
• Optimise use of go-git in Fleet.
• Create RFC/example for go-git plugins to improve extensibility.
• Investigate performance bottlenecks for Blame and Status.

Resources

• https://github.com/go-git/go-git/
• https://go-git.github.io/docs/

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git-fs: file system representation of a git repository by fgonzalez

Description

This project aims to create a Linux equivalent to the git/fs concept from git9. Now, I'm aware that git provides worktrees, but they are not enough for many use cases. Having a read-only representation of the whole repository simplifies scripting by quite a bit and, most importantly, reduces disk space usage. For instance, during kernel livepatching development, we need to process and analyze the source code of hundreds of kernel versions simultaneously.This is rather painful with git-worktrees, as each kernel branch requires no less than 1G of disk space.

As for the technical details, I'll implement the file system using FUSE. The project itself should not take much time to complete, but let's see where it takes me.

I'll try to keep the same design as git9, so the file system will look something like:

/mnt/git
      +-- ctl
      +-- HEAD
      |    +-- tree
      |    |    +--files
      |    |    +--in
      |    |    +--head
      |    |
      |    +-- hash
      |    +-- msg
      |    +-- parent
      |
      +-- branch
      |      |
      |      +-- heads
      |      |      +-- master
      |      |            +-- [commit files, see HEAD]
      |      +-- remotes
      |             +-- origin
      |                     +-- master
      |                            +-- [commit files, see HEAD]
      +-- object
            +-- 00051fd3f066e8c05ae7d3cf61ee363073b9535f # blob contents
            +-- 00051fd3f066e8c05ae7d3cf61ee363073b9535c
                  +-- [tree contents, see HEAD/tree]
            +-- 3f5dbc97ae6caba9928843ec65fb3089b96c9283
                  +-- [commit files, see HEAD]

So, if you wanted to look at the commit message of the current branch, you could simply do:

cat /mnt/git/HEAD/msg 

No collaboration needed. This is a solo project.

Goals

• Implement a working prototype.

• Measure and improve the performance if possible. This step will be the most crucial one. User space filesystems are slower by nature.

Resources

https://orib.dev/git9.html

https://docs.kernel.org/filesystems/fuse/fuse.html

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Create a page with all devel:languages:perl packages and their versions by tinita

Description

Perl projects now live in git: https://src.opensuse.org/perl

It would be useful to have an easy way to check which version of which perl module is in devel:languages:perl. Also we have meta overrides and patches for various modules, and it would be good to have them at a central place, so it is easier to lookup, and we can share with other vendors.

I did some initial data dump here a while ago: https://github.com/perlpunk/cpan-meta

But I never had the time to automate this.

I can also use the data to check if there are necessary updates (currently it uses data from download.opensuse.org, so there is some delay and it depends on building).

Goals

• Have a script that updates a central repository (e.g. https://src.opensuse.org/perl/_metadata) with metadata by looking at https://src.opensuse.org/perl/_ObsPrj (check if there are any changes from the last run)
• Create a HTML page with the list of packages (use Javascript and some table library to make it easily searchable)

Resources

Results

• https://perlpunk.github.io/opensuse-perl-meta/
• https://github.com/perlpunk/opensuse-perl-meta

Day 1

• First part of the code which retrieves data from https://src.opensuse.org/perl/_ObsPrj with submodules and creates a YAML and a JSON file.
• Repo: https://github.com/perlpunk/opensuse-perl-meta
• Also a first version of the HTML is live: https://perlpunk.github.io/opensuse-perl-meta/

Day 2

• HTML Page has now links to src.opensuse.org and the date of the last update, plus a short info at the top
• Code is now 100% covered by tests: https://app.codecov.io/gh/perlpunk/opensuse-perl-meta
• I used the modern perl class feature, which makes perl classes even nicer and shorter. See example
• Tests
  • I tried out the mocking feature of the modern Test2::V0 library which provides call tracking. See example
  • I tried out comparing data structures with the new Test2::V0 library. It let's you compare parts of the structure with the like function, which only compares the date that is mentioned in the expected data. example

Day 3

• Added various things to the table
  • Dependencies column
  • Show popup with info for cpanspec, patches and dependencies
  • Added last date / commit to the data export.

Plan: With the added date / commit we can now daily check _ObsPrj for changes and only fetch the data for changed packages.

Day 4

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Mail client with mailing list workflow support in Rust by acervesato

Description

To create a mail user interface using Rust programming language, supporting mailing list patches workflow. I know, aerc is already there, but I would like to create something simpler, without integrated protocols. Just a plain user interface that is using some crates to read and create emails which are fetched and sent via external tools.

I already know Rust, but not the async support, which is needed in this case in order to handle events inside the mail folder and to send notifications.

Goals

• simple user interface in the style of aerc, with some vim keybindings for motions and search
• automatic run of external tools (like mbsync) for checking emails
• automatic run commands for notifications
• apply patch set from ML
• tree-sitter support with styles

Resources

• ratatui: user interface (https://ratatui.rs/)
• notify: folder watcher (https://docs.rs/notify/latest/notify/)
• mail-parser: parser for emails (https://crates.io/crates/mail-parser)
• mail-builder: create emails in proper format (https://docs.rs/mail-builder/latest/mail_builder/)
• gitpatch: ML support (https://crates.io/crates/gitpatch)
• tree-sitter-rust: support for mail format (https://crates.io/crates/tree-sitter)

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Technical talks at universities by agamez

Description

This project aims to empower the next generation of tech professionals by offering hands-on workshops on containerization and Kubernetes, with a strong focus on open-source technologies. By providing practical experience with these cutting-edge tools and fostering a deep understanding of open-source principles, we aim to bridge the gap between academia and industry.

For now, the scope is limited to Spanish universities, since we already have the contacts and have started some conversations.

Goals

• Technical Skill Development: equip students with the fundamental knowledge and skills to build, deploy, and manage containerized applications using open-source tools like Kubernetes.
• Open-Source Mindset: foster a passion for open-source software, encouraging students to contribute to open-source projects and collaborate with the global developer community.
• Career Readiness: prepare students for industry-relevant roles by exposing them to real-world use cases, best practices, and open-source in companies.

Resources

• Instructors: experienced open-source professionals with deep knowledge of containerization and Kubernetes.
• SUSE Expertise: leverage SUSE's expertise in open-source technologies to provide insights into industry trends and best practices.

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A CLI for Harvester by mohamed.belgaied

Harvester does not officially come with a CLI tool, the user is supposed to interact with Harvester mostly through the UI. Though it is theoretically possible to use kubectl to interact with Harvester, the manipulation of Kubevirt YAML objects is absolutely not user friendly. Inspired by tools like multipass from Canonical to easily and rapidly create one of multiple VMs, I began the development of Harvester CLI. Currently, it works but Harvester CLI needs some love to be up-to-date with Harvester v1.0.2 and needs some bug fixes and improvements as well.

Project Description

Harvester CLI is a command line interface tool written in Go, designed to simplify interfacing with a Harvester cluster as a user. It is especially useful for testing purposes as you can easily and rapidly create VMs in Harvester by providing a simple command such as: harvester vm create my-vm --count 5 to create 5 VMs named my-vm-01 to my-vm-05.

Harvester CLI is functional but needs a number of improvements: up-to-date functionality with Harvester v1.0.2 (some minor issues right now), modifying the default behaviour to create an opensuse VM instead of an ubuntu VM, solve some bugs, etc.

Github Repo for Harvester CLI: https://github.com/belgaied2/harvester-cli

Done in previous Hackweeks

• Create a Github actions pipeline to automatically integrate Harvester CLI to Homebrew repositories: DONE
• Automatically package Harvester CLI for OpenSUSE / Redhat RPMs or DEBs: DONE

Goal for this Hackweek

The goal for this Hackweek is to bring Harvester CLI up-to-speed with latest Harvester versions (v1.3.X and v1.4.X), and improve the code quality as well as implement some simple features and bug fixes.

Some nice additions might be: * Improve handling of namespaced objects * Add features, such as network management or Load Balancer creation ? * Add more unit tests and, why not, e2e tests * Improve CI * Improve the overall code quality * Test the program and create issues for it

Issue list is here: https://github.com/belgaied2/harvester-cli/issues

Resources

The project is written in Go, and using client-go the Kubernetes Go Client libraries to communicate with the Harvester API (which is Kubernetes in fact). Welcome contributions are:

• Testing it and creating issues
• Documentation
• Go code improvement

What you might learn

Harvester CLI might be interesting to you if you want to learn more about:

• GitHub Actions
• Harvester as a SUSE Product
• Go programming language
• Kubernetes API
• Kubevirt API objects (Manipulating VMs and VM Configuration in Kubernetes using Kubevirt)

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Exploring Modern AI Trends and Kubernetes-Based AI Infrastructure by jluo

Description

Build a solid understanding of the current landscape of Artificial Intelligence and how modern cloud-native technologies—especially Kubernetes—support AI workloads.

Goals

Use Gemini Learning Mode to guide the exploration, surface relevant concepts, and structure the learning journey:

• Gain insight into the latest AI trends, tools, and architectural concepts.
• Understand how Kubernetes and related cloud-native technologies are used in the AI ecosystem (model training, deployment, orchestration, MLOps).

Resources

• Red Hat AI Topic Articles

  • https://www.redhat.com/en/topics/ai

• Kubeflow Documentation

  • https://www.kubeflow.org/docs/

• Q4 2025 CNCF Technology Landscape Radar report:

  • https://www.cncf.io/announcements/2025/11/11/cncf-and-slashdata-report-finds-leading-ai-tools-gaining-adoption-in-cloud-native-ecosystems/
  • https://www.cncf.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/cncfreporttechradar_111025a.pdf

• Agent-to-Agent (A2A) Protocol

  • https://developers.googleblog.com/en/a2a-a-new-era-of-agent-interoperability/

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The Agentic Rancher Experiment: Do Androids Dream of Electric Cattle? by moio

Rancher is a beast of a codebase. Let's investigate if the new 2025 generation of GitHub Autonomous Coding Agents and Copilot Workspaces can actually tame it.

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The Plan

Create a sandbox GitHub Organization, clone in key Rancher repositories, and let the AI loose to see if it can handle real-world enterprise OSS maintenance - or if it just hallucinates new breeds of Kubernetes resources!

Specifically, throw "Agentic Coders" some typical tasks in a complex, long-lived open-source project, such as:

❥ The Grunt Work: generate missing GoDocs, unit tests, and refactorings. Rebase PRs.

❥ The Complex Stuff: fix actual (historical) bugs and feature requests to see if they can traverse the complexity without (too much) human hand-holding.

❥ Hunting Down Gaps: find areas lacking in docs, areas of improvement in code, dependency bumps, and so on.

If time allows, also experiment with Model Context Protocol (MCP) to give agents context on our specific build pipelines and CI/CD logs.

Why?

We know AI can write "Hello World." and also moderately complex programs from a green field. But can it rebase a 3-month-old PR with conflicts in rancher/rancher? I want to find the breaking point of current AI agents to determine if and how they can help us to reduce our technical debt, work faster and better. At the same time, find out about pitfalls and shortcomings.

The CONCLUSION!!!

A State of the Union document was compiled to summarize lessons learned this week. For more gory details, just read on the diary below!

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Self-Scaling LLM Infrastructure Powered by Rancher by ademicev0

Self-Scaling LLM Infrastructure Powered by Rancher

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Description

The Problem

Running LLMs can get expensive and complex pretty quickly.

Today there are typically two choices:

1. Use cloud APIs like OpenAI or Anthropic. Easy to start with, but costs add up at scale.
2. Self-host everything - set up Kubernetes, figure out GPU scheduling, handle scaling, manage model serving... it's a lot of work.

What if there was a middle ground?

What if infrastructure scaled itself instead of making you scale it?

Can we use existing Rancher capabilities like CAPI, autoscaling, and GitOps to make this simpler instead of building everything from scratch?

Project Repository: github.com/alexander-demicev/llmserverless

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What This Project Does

A key feature is hybrid deployment: requests can be routed based on complexity or privacy needs. Simple or low-sensitivity queries can use public APIs (like OpenAI), while complex or private requests are handled in-house on local infrastructure. This flexibility allows balancing cost, privacy, and performance - using cloud for routine tasks and on-premises resources for sensitive or demanding workloads.

A complete, self-scaling LLM infrastructure that:

• Scales to zero when idle (no idle costs)
• Scales up automatically when requests come in
• Adds more nodes when needed, removes them when demand drops
• Runs on any infrastructure - laptop, bare metal, or cloud

Think of it as "serverless for LLMs" - focus on building, the infrastructure handles itself.

How It Works

A combination of open source tools working together:

Flow:

• Users interact with OpenWebUI (chat interface)
• Requests go to LiteLLM Gateway
• LiteLLM routes requests to:
  • Ollama (Knative) for local model inference (auto-scales pods)
  • Or cloud APIs for fallback

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Port the classic browser game HackTheNet to PHP 8 by dgedon

Description

The classic browser game HackTheNet from 2004 still runs on PHP 4/5 and MySQL 5 and needs a port to PHP 8 and e.g. MariaDB.

Goals

• Port the game to PHP 8 and MariaDB 11
• Create a container where the game server can simply be started/stopped

Resources

• https://github.com/nodeg/hackthenet

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Rewrite Distrobox in go (POC) by fabriziosestito

Description

Rewriting Distrobox in Go.

Main benefits:

• Easier to maintain and to test
• Adapter pattern for different container backends (LXC, systemd-nspawn, etc.)

Goals

• Build a minimal starting point with core commands
• Keep the CLI interface compatible: existing users shouldn't notice any difference
• Use a clean Go architecture with adapters for different container backends
• Keep dependencies minimal and binary size small
• Benchmark against the original shell script

Resources

• Upstream project: https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox/
• Distrobox site: https://distrobox.it/
• ArchWiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Distrobox

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Technical talks at universities by agamez

Description

This project aims to empower the next generation of tech professionals by offering hands-on workshops on containerization and Kubernetes, with a strong focus on open-source technologies. By providing practical experience with these cutting-edge tools and fostering a deep understanding of open-source principles, we aim to bridge the gap between academia and industry.

For now, the scope is limited to Spanish universities, since we already have the contacts and have started some conversations.

Goals

• Technical Skill Development: equip students with the fundamental knowledge and skills to build, deploy, and manage containerized applications using open-source tools like Kubernetes.
• Open-Source Mindset: foster a passion for open-source software, encouraging students to contribute to open-source projects and collaborate with the global developer community.
• Career Readiness: prepare students for industry-relevant roles by exposing them to real-world use cases, best practices, and open-source in companies.

Resources

• Instructors: experienced open-source professionals with deep knowledge of containerization and Kubernetes.
• SUSE Expertise: leverage SUSE's expertise in open-source technologies to provide insights into industry trends and best practices.

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Help Create A Chat Control Resistant Turnkey Chatmail/Deltachat Relay Stack - Rootless Podman Compose, OpenSUSE BCI, Hardened, & SELinux by 3nd5h1771fy

Description

The Mission: Decentralized & Sovereign Messaging

FYI: If you have never heard of "Chatmail", you can visit their site here, but simply put it can be thought of as the underlying protocol/platform decentralized messengers like DeltaChat use for their communications. Do not confuse it with the honeypot looking non-opensource paid for prodect with better seo that directs you to chatmailsecure(dot)com

In an era of increasing centralized surveillance by unaccountable bad actors (aka BigTech), "Chat Control," and the erosion of digital privacy, the need for sovereign communication infrastructure is critical. Chatmail is a pioneering initiative that bridges the gap between classic email and modern instant messaging, offering metadata-minimized, end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) communication that is interoperable and open.

However, unless you are a seasoned sysadmin, the current recommended deployment method of a Chatmail relay is rigid, fragile, difficult to properly secure, and effectively takes over the entire host the "relay" is deployed on.

Why This Matters

A simple, host agnostic, reproducible deployment lowers the entry cost for anyone wanting to run a privacy‑preserving, decentralized messaging relay. In an era of perpetually resurrected chat‑control legislation threats, EU digital‑sovereignty drives, and many dangers of using big‑tech messaging platforms (Apple iMessage, WhatsApp, FB Messenger, Instagram, SMS, Google Messages, etc...) for any type of communication, providing an easy‑to‑use alternative empowers:

• Censorship resistance - No single entity controls the relay; operators can spin up new nodes quickly.
  
• Surveillance mitigation - End‑to‑end OpenPGP encryption ensures relay operators never see plaintext.
  
• Digital sovereignty - Communities can host their own infrastructure under local jurisdiction, aligning with national data‑policy goals.
  

By turning the Chatmail relay into a plug‑and‑play container stack, we enable broader adoption, foster a resilient messaging fabric, and give developers, activists, and hobbyists a concrete tool to defend privacy online.

Goals

As I indicated earlier, this project aims to drastically simplify the deployment of Chatmail relay. By converting this architecture into a portable, containerized stack using Podman and OpenSUSE base container images, we can allow anyone to deploy their own censorship-resistant, privacy-preserving communications node in minutes.

Our goal for Hack Week: package every component into containers built on openSUSE/MicroOS base images, initially orchestrated with a single container-compose.yml (podman-compose compatible). The stack will:

• Run on any host that supports Podman (including optimizations and enhancements for SELinux‑enabled systems).
  
• Allow network decoupling by refactoring configurations to move from file-system constrained Unix sockets to internal TCP networking, allowing containers achieve stricter isolation.
• Utilize Enhanced Security with SELinux by using purpose built utilities such as udica we can quickly generate custom SELinux policies for the container stack, ensuring strict confinement superior to standard/typical Docker deployments.
• Allow the use of bind or remote mounted volumes for shared data (/var/vmail, DKIM keys, TLS certs, etc.).
  
• Replace the local DNS server requirement with a remote DNS‑provider API for DKIM/TXT record publishing.
  

By delivering a turnkey, host agnostic, reproducible deployment, we lower the barrier for individuals and small communities to launch their own chatmail relays, fostering a decentralized, censorship‑resistant messaging ecosystem that can serve DeltaChat users and/or future services adopting this protocol

Resources

• The links included above
• https://chatmail.at/doc/relay/
• https://delta.chat/en/help
• Project repo -> https://codeberg.org/EndShittification/containerized-chatmail-relay

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