EPEL report 2007, week 19

[Fernando Lopez-Lezcano]

[sorry for the delay, maybe too late but here it goes anyway - was way
too busy then and I'm now in the middle of a trip visiting family so
email access is sporadic...]

On Sun, 2007-05-13 at 10:06 +0200, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote: 
> Fernando Lopez-Lezcano schrieb:
> > On Sat, 2007-05-12 at 15:10 +0200, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> >> Josh Boyer schrieb:
> >>>>  * repotags -- some discussion in the meeting again. It looks like it
> >>>> will we'll continue without repotags (final decision probably in next
> >>>> weeks meeting, after this summary has been posted and discussed). If you
> >>>> want repotags please *speak up now* 
> > I do. But maybe you are just asking for "I do"'s from list participants
> > that do not have a third party repo?
> 
> Actually I'm interested in opnions from everyone; but I'm especially
> interested in opnions from Fedora/EPEL contributos.
> 
> > Rationale for support has been already hashed to death in many threads. 
> 
> And others that don't see a sense or benefit in repotags  (or even think
> they do harm) have expressed their opinion as well.

Yes, of course, I did not mean only supporting opinions had been
expressed, that would make this a no-brainer :-) 

My personal, biased and most probably incomplete reading of the opposing
opinions include "I wish this would just go away"[*], "this introduces
problems in ordering of packages between repositories", "we are being
forced to do this and we don't want to", "it is a bad solution to the
problem", "it would be a problem to set this up in the epel build
system" and "political problems in consistence between epel and the rest
of fedora". I think most if not all the technical points have had
reasonable technical responses from the proponents (and long time users)
of repotags. 

[*] I'm _not_ trying to flame, I actually read this in one of the irc
sessions and I think several emails as well. 

> >>>> and *help* to find a technical
> >>>> solution that is not only fine for the EPEL Steering Committee, but also
> >>>> acceptable for the Fedora Packaging Committee and FESCo -- from
> >>>> discussions on list and on IRC it looks like that some members of those
> >>>> groups tend to be against using repotags (see this weeks FESCo meeting
> >>>> for example) or want to see something cooperation statements signed by
> >>>> EPEL and 3rd party repos before they are willing to accept repotags.
> >>> Just some clarification.  Yes, FESCo overall didn't see a good reason to
> >>> use repotags.  If EPEL chooses to do so, FESCo won't stand in the way.
> >> FYI: I was a bit against repotags in the past, but my position these
> >> days after all this discussions is similar.
> >> Or, to be more verbose: If someone works out the details on how to
> >> realize repotags in Fedora then (depending on how the proposal looks
> >> like) I'll likely abstain from a vote or might even support to use
> >> repotags, as long as a simple "cp FC-6/foo.spec EL-5/" remains possible.
> >> But I don't have the energy to work out the details. Anyone willing to
> >> work them out?
> > 
> > I presume this is internal help? (meaning how to tweak the build system
> > to support them transparently without any impact to the spec files
> > themselves?)
> 
> No, more meaning: Find a technical and political solution that is
> acceptable for EPEL SIG and the Fedora Packaging Committee (and FESCo,
> if it wants to ).
> 
> And let me warn you: there seems to be a opposition against repotags on
> that way from what I can see, so this process might take weeks and
> likely lots of discussions and mails. There are high chances to get
> frustrated and burned out on the way afaics.

Yeah, I understand that. No offense people, but after reading some of
the recurring threads I was ready to go jump out of the nearest window. 

Given the previous threads I personally don't have much hope that
repotags will be ever accepted by the Fedora community and regretfully I
don't have any magical political solution to the problem - it does look
to me that most of the objections are political in nature. 

-- Fernando