[fab] Re: Alternatives

[Greg DeKoenigsberg]

On Tue, 9 May 2006, Rex Dieter wrote:

> Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> > /me is late in the discussion -- and it seems everything important is
> > already said. 
> > 
> > Just to make sure: I also don't like the idea of having kernels in
> > extras or adding a CCRMA-Kernel to core. What I fear most besides the
> > maintenance nightmare: openVZ, vserver, swsusp2, reiser4 <insert 10
> > other projects> would probably want their own Fedora-Kernel in that
> > case, too. And I don't think we really want that ;-)
> 
> As I see it, the bigger picture here is whether to resurrect 
> Alternatives or not.
> 
> If so, the kernel can be treated just like any other alternative (ie, 
> core-replacing pkg).  As long as someone steps up to maintain it, I have 
> no problem with alternative kernels.  As a corollary, I'd venture the 
> likelihood of volunteers to be kernel maintainers to be small.
> 
> Personally, I'm in favor of the general idea of Alternatives, but if 
> it's going to happen, it will require a lot of time, care and feeding, 
> having its own set of complications and a need for clear standards and 
> rules.

And these, of course, are the reasons we ditched it in the first place.

That was before we had a lot of the pieces we have now, though.  We're 
probably in a better place to do it now... if enough people see the value.

I think they probably would -- but working out sane policy will be quite a 
challenge, I think.

Moreover, I'm not sure I see "Alternatives" as a single repo.  Rather, I 
see "Alternatives" as a way to label various repos.  Perhaps a "Fedora 
Alternatives" repo is any repo that:

a) Meets the general criteria for Fedora from a freedom perspective;
b) Replaces packages in Core or Extras;
c) Together with Core and Extras, defines a consistent package universe.

I think that trying to reconcile separate "Alternatives" repos to one 
another would be complete insanity -- but a responsible Alternative repo 
manager could probably maintain 10 or 20 packages in a consistent way.

The biggest problem I see is attribution of bugs that pop up in 
Alternatives-based installs.  That could be a nightmare.

--g

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