Summary of the 2008-04-08 Packaging Committee meeting

Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com
Thu May 15 03:40:56 UTC 2008


Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>
>>> I didn't blame anyone. Just stated facts.
>>
>> Same here.  No conflicts existed until fedora packagers duplicated 
>> packages that already existed in well-known repositories and forked 
>> them instead of mirroring.
> 
> A cross distribution package repository is always going to be different 
> from a distribution specific repository.

I don't see how that is relevant, given that the pre-existing 
repositories mostly/all have added version-specific instances for each 
fedora release.

>> Which still doesn't explain why any needed package that existed 
>> elsewhere couldn't be maintained identically to eliminate the conflict 
>> issue.  Maybe there's a case of that somewhere but I'm not convinced 
>> it would have been a problem in general.  Would jpackage really have 
>> refused to have the same maintainer make sure common packages were 
>> always identical?
> 
> It is impossible to do that. Fedora has its own release cycle, licensing 
> policies and packaging guidelines. The package dependencies will differ 
> in many cases based on all of these.

Could you share some amusing anecdotes about how the existing 
repositories refused to make these changed versions available when you 
tried to provide them to maintain complete compatibility?

>> Factor 2 is that _some_ of the packages from the 3rd party repos were 
>> forked into potentially conflicting versions that may cause problems 
>> with the original, while factor 1 ensures that you can't get all of 
>> the packages you are likely to need without them.  And a side effect 
>> seems to be that the old repos are no longer particularly interested 
>> in supporting fedora.
> 
> That's not the real reason again as explained to you earlier.

The reason really doesn't matter.  The effect and problems do.

>> If you can't address the effects of both factors at once, I guess 
>> there really isn't anything else to say.
> 
> If you keep ignoring what is being said to you, there is no point 
> indeed. Move on.

There's been nothing to ignore - I haven't heard any plan to improve the 
situation.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com






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