Aggregation upstream projects are BAD (kdesdk for example)

Hans de Goede j.w.r.degoede at hhs.nl
Sat Sep 8 13:12:38 UTC 2007


Hi All,

A college of mine wanted to use umbrello in our Universities labs, since the
Linux install there are Fedora he asked me about umbrello for Fedora.

Since I could NOT find it, I packaged it, see:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=283471

But then I got a comment to the review it was already in Fedora in kdesdk. But 
then why on earth doesn't kdesdk have a Provides umbrello so that yum install
umbrello works? Or even better an umbrello sub-package?

As it currently stands umbrello is just plain unfindable to end users, as you 
know I'm not some noob. I even searched for in progress reviews of umbrello.

Also I think it is a very bad idea to ship packages with a clearly seperate 
upstream in some kinda bundle form. Sticking with the umbrello example, in 
order for the latest version to be included into Fedora, we must wait for a new 
upstream kdesdk release, which likely won't happen before there is a kdesdk4 in 
some far away future, as kde3 is as good as EOL.

Notice that umbrello and kdesdk are just an example, this goes for other 
Aggregation upstreams too.

Since on of Fedora's strenghts is being always up to date with the latest 
upstream versions, I think using these kind of upstream aggregation projects is 
a BAD idea as it creates interlocks with regards to versions between clearly 
seperate projects like kdesdk and umbrello.


If an upstream disolves into something bigger thats a whole different story, 
I'm talking about the aggregated project still having a clearly alive and 
active upstream. Actually this is much like having apps with bundled other 
upstream libs, where we always say these must not be used, and we even delay 
reviews, waiting for a package and review of the lib as a seperate package if 
necessary. I say we should extend this rule to bundled clearly seperate 
upstream apps.



p.s.




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