[Fedora-packaging] I wish to package some CC licensed content ...

[steve at lonetwin.net]

Hello Nicolas,

Thanks for your comments. Firstly, to your summary, i'd say ...

> Thus, while it's fun to reinvent the wheel and resolve again known
> problems, if you want to actually succeed, you'd better limit your
> ambitions to conventional packaging.

I completely agree with you on that. If anything, i am trying ^not^ to  
reivent the wheel, for example, I am not inclined to the idea of  
creating a whole different format and another set of tools to describe  
content and it's meta-data. For instance, the thought did occur to me  
to check whether yum can support a different backend than rpm (lets  
say a tgz with a plain text/xml file for metadata), but that would've  
be reinventing the wheel. rpm is good enough. In fact it is great,  
because it has been tried and tested and mature.

Well that said ...


Quoting Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot at laposte.net>:

> 1. packaging CC non-software is a good idea as there's no reason it can
> not enhance our user experience as much as critical software such as
> xeyes or wanda the fish
>
> 2. Doing it outside Fedora proper will result in the usual third-party
> merging fights/conflicts we like so much

Oh, don't get me wrong ! I am all *for* having my such a repository  
fedora endorsed/supported. After all fedora already has a submission,  
build and distribution setup. So, if FESCo thinks having a fedora-cc  
repo is a good idea, I'll be most pleased.

>
> 3. Experience showed relocation was a false good idea. Don't use it. The
> proper FHS way is to define clean file location conventions and stick to
> them. If you are consistent the user will adapt and add bookmarks or
> symlinks as he sees fit

Umm ...well, i thought about this and seems to me that relocation *is*  
a bad idea for software. I can't think of the same arguments applying  
for content which is by it's nature self contained.

>
> 4. RPM groups are basically deprecated. Do not try anything fancy with
> them.

Yep. ok !

>
> 5. In general think twice about making a different choice than the one
> we use for other packages, assuming you are different and current
> practices do not apply to you is usually a mistake.
>

That's where I hope people here can help with.

So, to summarize:
- I am all for not being a third-party repository
- I am not convinced relocation for (essentially self-contained)  
content is a bad idea.
- RPM Groups are deprecated, so chuck that
- Your suggestions are important. I have a pretty good feeling about this. I
   think we are on to something. For example think of being able to  
"yum <dofoo>" with any of the content here:
   http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Content_Curators
   http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Books
   http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Films


cheers,
- steve