Heads-up: brand new RPM version about to hit rawhide

Doug Ledford dledford at redhat.com
Sat Jul 12 18:30:45 UTC 2008


On Sat, 2008-07-12 at 13:40 -0400, Josh Boyer wrote:
> > I'm *making* the time...around my day job.
> 
> Most of the Fedora contributors do that.

OK, how about I clarify that a bit.  I'm making time around my day job
because I can *at the moment*.  If I were to put things off to F11,
there is a good chance that when F11 is in development, I may be tied up
elsewhere.  So I really would like to move forward now, just because now
is when I can.

> > But more recently, I spent 20 or 30 minutes listening to Mark Webbink
> > talk legal issues at the Raleigh FUDCon, and during that talk someone
> > asked a question (someone who was kinda upset at the time).  The
> > question/accusation kinda went something like this:  "Fedora introduced
> > this new thing, fedora spins, and they helped me easily make my own
> > spin, but now they expect me to carry both it and all the sources
> > myself.  What kind of loyalty does this show to the community that
> > *makes* Fedora that you won't support them on this sort of stuff and you
> > leave them hanging out to dry."
> 
> As a side bar, we need to figure out a way to do a better recap of
> FUDCon.  People's blogs and personal recaps are great, but this seems
> like a pretty important topic and I don't recall it being discussed or
> recapped anywhere.  (Please someone correct me if I'm wrong and I missed
> it.)
> 
> > After the talk was over I spent some time talking to Jesse where I
> > pointed out to him that if you did away with the look aside cache for
> > tarballs, and instead used exploded source in a repo, that you could in
> > fact add new branches onto a repo for essentially zero cost and those
> > branches could be what's used by people to make spins.  That in this way
> > we could, for next to no additional burden, carry their sources for them
> > to satisfy the GPL and to allow them to more readily create and
> > distribute spins.  Obviously, this hasn't gone anywhere since then.
> 
> This is the first time I've heard that benefit.  It seems like a fairly
> good one.

I thought so.

> > > to rework
> > > our entire infrastructure to deal with a new SCM for _packages_ so that
> > > people can do code _development_ on them when that should all be done
> > > _upstream_.
> > 
> > The distinction between upstream development and Fedora development is
> > artificial.  And it's a nice way to keep upstream developers from having
> > any interest in managing their own packages.  Congratulations on that.
> 
> In many cases upstream and Fedora are synonymous (anaconda, pungi, yum,
> etc).  In many cases they aren't.
> 
> And we _do_ have upstream maintainers packaging for Fedora.  The CVS
> package repo we have is not that large of a burden.

Maybe not, but neither is standing on one foot and chanting "ooga booga"
while kicking of koji builds.  Being a small burden does not excuse
requiring something that's unnecessary, or worse yet, counterproductive.

>   Your argument about
> that is about as effective as saying RPM is the reason upstream doesn't
> package for Fedora because they mostly use Debian or Ubuntu, which are
> apt based.  There is truth in it, but it is not an "OMG the sky is
> falling" situation.

You're right, it's not an OMG the sky is falling thing.  It's an
efficiency thing.  Just as someone at one time pointed out that the
design of the poll syscall meant the kernel implementation was horribly
inefficient and so they lobbied for and eventually got epoll accepted,
this is the same thing.  My profile runs are showing we are wasting
valuable time where we don't need to and where there are better ways of
doing things, and I'm lobbying for it.

> >  So, as long as Red Hat and Fedora
> > intend to share technology in this area, then I would suggest that Red
> > Hat not block Fedora's needs, and likewise Fedora shouldn't actively
> > block Red Hat's needs, especially on the basis of artificial maxims that
> > aren't even true.
> 
> This is very simple.  Nobody is blocking anything.

No, no...let's keep things very clear on the issues here.  I haven't
heard back from Panu on my last mail to him, but prior to that, I *have*
been told things are blocked (specifically the rpm headers needed to
proceed).

>   All you have to do
> is actually start doing something instead of telling everyone that you
> are going to do something and you'll make progress.  Jesse had a git
> repo at one time of Fedora.  You might be able to leverage that work as
> a starting point.
> 
> > > Again, scratch your own itch if it's bothering you that badly.
> > 
> > Isn't that what I've been saying I want to do?
> 
> Yes.  So do it, and stop saying it?

I have weekly status reports I have to turn in, and I have to answer for
where I spend my time.  That means if I spend a lot of time on a project
that ends up getting thrown away because people told me I was blocked
and I didn't listen, then I have to answer for that.

> Places to start:
> 

Need the rpm changes before koji.

> 1) Koji
> 2) Bodhi
> 3) The Makefiles in the SCM
> 4) Jesse's git import of Fedora

I'm not looking for anyone to do a damn thing really, but I am
interested in making sure people will stay out of my way while I get
things done.  So far, I've been told F10 is a non-starter (by one
person), but more importantly, as you point out above there would need
to be changes in koji, bodhi, the official fedora SCM server(s), etc.
Even if I thought Panu would take the header changes and any other
possible things I might do to RPM, if the other people who control these
other items of Fedora infrastructure are dead set against this type of
work, then it's a waste of my time to futz around with it unless I'm
willing to fork my own distro.  The responses I've gotten so far have
not made me inclined to think the powers that be will even look at
things, but I could be wrong.  However, a flat statement that they would
look at things would go a long way towards eliminating any
misunderstandings and would end this entire thread because I would just
go off and get started on my own and come back when I have something to
hand over.

-- 
Doug Ledford <dledford at redhat.com>
              GPG KeyID: CFBFF194
              http://people.redhat.com/dledford

Infiniband specific RPMs available at
              http://people.redhat.com/dledford/Infiniband

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