OMG! I've started a war! - Was:Prelink success story :)

[Panu Matilainen]

On Fri, 27 Feb 2004, Michael Schwendt wrote:

> On Fri, 27 Feb 2004 08:10:53 +0200, Panu Matilainen wrote:
> 
> > I can't speak for Dag or anybody else but I'm reading between the lines
> > that he (and others) are interested in Fedora Extras which fedora.us is
> > supposed to become/be merged with, and wants to discuss these things so
> > that the official Fedora Extras can get rid of some of the issues that
> > have kept him and other individual repository maintainers away from
> > contributing to fedora.us.
> 
> I agree with the first half of that long sentence, but not with the second
> half.

You're probably reading too much into that... 

>  
> > So please lets not get into the painful and tiresome fedora.us vs
> > individual-repositories flamewars again but at least *try* to have a
> > decent discussion what Fedora Extras rules should be, since the current
> > fedora.us policies are more than obviously driving various people away
> > from it.
> 
> But when I've asked before what set of rules would be "better", there has
> been silence as response. Obviously, some packagers would contribute only
> 
>  * if they had access to the build system,
>  * could release whenever they like,
>  * could perform version upgrades whenever they like,
>  * and if they did not depend on other people to
>    review/approve their "work".
> 
> And with that we're back at the general fedora.us policy debate, because
> it has been found that the average package needs some work before it is
> considered ready. And that has been true for some packages adapted from
> 3rd party repositories, too. (At fedora.us, a package with incomplete
> build requirements will either fail in the build system or build with an
> incomplete set of features, so "smart'n'lazy" building of binary rpms
> doesn't work.)

Sure, and I'm not advocating removing the QA process from the system or 
anything like that. I guess I'm mostly trying to say "keep down the 
flames" - fedora.us policies were discussed at length (mildly put) but 
that doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement, if somebody outside 
current fedora.us community suggests something it shouldn't be just shot 
down "because you don't care anyway". 

OTOH I'm curiously waiting what's RH's stand on the Extras thing (or are 
they going to say anything other than tell "fedora.us IS Extras").

> 
> > Having the kind of people who can maintain dozens or hundreds
> > of packages themselves (like the individual repository maintainers now
> > do) on board instead of everybody ignoring and denying each others
> > existence would be an asset, not a bad thing.
> 
> No, but it is far from a realistic vision, and we haven't had any
> discussions that give reason to believe otherwise. Come on, buildroot
> and epoch are no blockers, are they?

Maybe not, but being over pedantic about some artificial rules can be, for
somebody with 300 packages. If the packages work then why should the
packager tweak their specs to match some artificial rules when it already
works? Note the *if* in there - those 300 packages should be peer-reviewed
just like anything else to see that they're ok. I'm just repeating what
I've said before:  fedora.us QA can be incredible nitpicking, whether it's
the intention or not and that can be awfully irritating if the package 
already "just works" but maybe doesn't win the annual spec beauty contest 
:)

> 
> > The thing we should get rid of is the repackaging of same basic stuff
> > (as in "everybody uses") over and over again.
> 
> "We should" is easy to say. I've said a similar thing about duplication
> of efforts a long time ago. The question is how to achieve it?

I don't hold the silver bullet but open-mindness (trying to 
mentally clear off the old flamewars, meaning everybody involved, not you 
or anybody else specifically) would be a start I suppose.

	- Panu -