relations with other repos in practice

[Patrice Dumas]

On Mon, Aug 06, 2007 at 05:55:02PM +0200, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> On 05.08.2007 19:10, Patrice Dumas wrote:
> > 
> > I am about to import most of my packages in EPEL. Some are in other
> > repos (dag, dries). For the packages I have looked at (acpitool,
> > gnochm), there is no specific need for coordination (no different name,
> > split...). I can contact the people maintaining the packages in other
> > repos, but do youhave an idea on what should be coordinated? 
> 
> In such a case where names, spits are similar and as long as there are
> no reports from users about broken deps it can't hurt to contact the
> maintainers of other repos to exchange patches, discuss bugs or stuff
> like that if there is a need to.

Ok, that I could do, but currently there are no such needs. Names and
split are the same, no specific bugs or the like, so there is nothing 
specific to discuss with other repos except for coordination. I could
just say, 'hey I will maintain that package in EPEL', but is it really
coordination?

in
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers/RepositoryCollaboration
there is:

* Contributors need to make an effort to check if there are packages in
  third party repositories that would conflict with any new packages
  submitted to the official repository and if so establish contact with
  the maintainers of packages in other third party repositories.

So it seems that the contact is asked for for contributors who want to 
coordinate with other repos, but I don't understand what it practically 
means in term of coordination. Once again if it is just 'hey I will 
maintain that package in EPEL', this just seems to be a waste of time
if there is nothing more to propose to other repos for collaboration.

(Of course when there are technical issues, it always pays to speak with
other repo maintainers, but that's a completly different issue).

> > One thing I
> > see is the release. It seems to me that the repos should play nice and
> > avoid updating over other repo packages. So maybe we could have rules
> > like avoid upgrading dag repo by making sure that the release in epel is
> > lower?
> 
> I don't think that's possible. Different repos follow different ideas
> and different update strategies -- such rules would be problematic and
> hindering for everyone afaics.

If repos upgrades each other is it still possible to speak about
coordination/colaboration?


As I stated several times before, EPEL can either try to collaborate
with other repos or try to absorb them, I personally don't mind that
much. But this should be consistently done. If there is no policy for 
collaboration, we shouldn't say that we are collaborating.

--
Pat