Confusion with new platforms and packages

[Bill Nottingham]

Nathan Robertson (nathanr at nathanr.net) said: 
> 2. Adding packages that make the system more useful, and are essentially 
> equivalents for powerpc of packages that FC ships on x86. One example is 
> hfsutils (needed to write a NewWorld boot partition, bugs #117512, #120811).
> 
> Bugs reported against #1 types are accepted and fixed. Bugs against #2 
> types, it appears that Red Hat engineering people are unsure as to what 
> they are expected to do. Quoting bug #117512, Bill Nottingham:
> 
> "Hm, I suppose there should be some sort of policy on packages not
> required for any officially supported arch."
> 
> This is not the only example I've come across of this, just the latest 
> one that has led me to post this message. Can somebody senior from Red 
> Hat give us some idea as to what the story is here?

Hey, come back here, I can't reach you with my cane.

Basically, there's never been a PPC release of Fedora, or even of Red Hat
Linux/Red Hat Enterprise Linux. So, it would be adding a package that
doesn't really apply to anything else in the current 'family'... yet.

Moreover, until the external contribution infrastructure is up and
running, any new package addition requires someone to shepherd it
though the build system, act as a bug bucket and patch clearing house,
etc.

Mainly for the second reason, at this point I'd think it's best to be
very conservative when it comes to adding packages, *especially* ones
that aren't going to be used in the current planned FC2 trees (x86 and
x86-64). Unfortunately, at this point it's a zero-sum game - time spent
by someone pushing through packages such as this is time that can't be
spent fixing other bugs. So, without someone internally (*sigh*)
volunteering to deal with the package, it may not make sense to add it.

Someone did volunteer, however, and hfsutils should be in tomorrow's
tree.

Once the contribution infrastructure gets going, this situation should
be a lot simpler.

Bill