Recapitulate the current state of Fedora Extras and some ideas to make it better

[Josh Boyer]

On Sun, 2006-07-09 at 18:31 +0200, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> 
> Michael Schwendt schrieb:
> > On Sun, 09 Jul 2006 15:42:35 +0200, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> >>  * FESCo
> >>   * The old FESCo didn't work to well. A lot of members weren't very
> >> active. A lot of stuff was still discussed, but a lot of things didn't
> >> get done. Some things were discussed and agreed on, but not documented
> >> in the wiki.
> > There ought to be a web page with announcements. The history of decisions
> > made by FESCo. 
> 
> I think the FESCo meeting summaries should have a section annoucements.
> 
> But I oppose a web page with a decision history. Decisions should be
> documented at a proper place where they belong (for exmplae the
> dead.package mechanism should be documented on the extras-cvs-faq page.
> Or in a maintainer guide). They need to be documented there in any case
> an maintaining two places is ridiculous IMHO.
> 
> Note: Yes, for some decisions there might be no proper place. Creating a
>  special page for them might be a good idea.

+1

> >>  * Co-Maintainership
> >>   * This is IMO one of the biggest areas we should work on soon
> > It is unimportant. 
> 
> It is important to work on...
> 
> > Co-maintenance is possible for a long time.
> 
> ..because it's not used.
> 

Not entirely the case.  There are those that co-maintain packages
already.  Ville and I do this for tla.  Admittedly, that is a fairly
low-maintenance package though.

> >>   * proper Rebuild policy for new releases (or automated rebuilds?) --
> >> or we want to discuss this each time a new release comes up and decide
> >> on a case-by-case basis? Or simply rebuild all of Extras each time all
> >> of Core is rebuild?
> > Well, when Core is rebuilt due to important changes/improvements in GCC,
> > would it be possible that FESCo is notified about that?
> 
> f13 announced the last mass-rebuilds on fedora-maintainers. And jeremy
> is in FESCo, I'm sure he'll poke us.
> 
> > Or if somebody
> > within FESCo learns about such a rebuild, that there will be an official
> > announcement about what FE packagers should/must do?
> 
> I'm not sure I understand you correctly. It for sure will be announced
> when FESCo agrees on a mass-rebuild.

Maybe we should revisit how Extras rebuilds are done too.  Personally, I
like the way they're handled in Core.  A single person starts it and
maintainers email him if they _do not_ want their package rebuilt for
whatever reason.  IMHO, that provides the advantage that the number of
cats to herd is fewer.

> 
> Also non-sponsors might be interested in this feature as well.
> 
> >[...]
> >>   * fedora-devel-list, fedora-extras-list, fedora-maintainers -- these
> >> multiple lists get confusing, some things that are discussed on
> >> fedora-maintainers-list would be better suited for fedora-extras-list
> >> AFICS;
> > It's not the confusion that hurts, but the insane amount of cross-posting.
> 
> Both AFAICS.
> 
> I'd prefer if fedora-maintainers would be more like an moderated,
> non-discussion announce-list to inform all the maintainers about
> important things. Discussion on the other two lists.

Actually, I disagree.  Having a list for Extras and a list for Core just
segregates things more.  This is a case where I think we need cohesion.
We're already talking about doing releases differently to be more like
Core, and various other Core<->Extras merge type issues, so having a
single list for all package maintainers to discuss is a step towards
that goal.

josh