On 10/18/06, Christopher Stone <chris.stone@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I think this is better than some poor user who is forced to remove all packages from a certain repository by hand after their system becomes messed up.
I could not disagree more. If a repository maintainer isn't responding to that repository's users by address the problems.. then users should stop using that repo en-masse. We should not apply poorly conceived protectionist default policies to restrict how users interact with 3rd party repos. Users of those additonal repos either go talk to the repo maintainers and help fix the packaging problems... or people stop using the repos. If we attempt to make it easier for ignorant users to use repos in ways that even the repo maintainers don't even claim to test for reliability all you are going to do is encourage people to ignore their responsibility to communicate problems back to the repo maintainers... and the underlying technical, organizational, and communication problems will never get resolved. We can not and should not attempt to constrain the polices from other repos from a privledged position simpy because we have input into what Core's default settings are.
There was a poor unfortunate user on #fedora just yesterday who ran into this problem and was forced to uninstall all 3rd party repo packages which due to dependencies resulted in uninstalling and reinstalling dozens of packages. This is *much* more freightening and confusing to unsuspecting users if you ask me.
Your responsibility is to first drive any user who is experiencing a technical problem to the appropriate forum and bug tracking entity. Telling them to uninstall everything before attempting to communicate with the 3rd party maintainers who can potentially address this issue is no different then telling them to uninstall Fedora and try Suse instead of filing a bugreport. Moreover, by short-circuiting the issue tracking for 3rd party software you are not doing anything to prevent the technical problems from re-occuring. All you are doing is perpetuating your own personal bias against the 3rd party repo. I'm all about personal bias, I live for it.. but I first want to make sure that I do what I can to prevent technical problems from re-ocurring... not just paper over them and pretend they don't exist by hoping some restrictive default depresolving policies protect users. The fact is default protective policies are only going to trade the types of issues users currently see for newer harder to diagnose issues. Harder to diagnose because the protective default clientside policy will be in direct conflict with how the 3rd party maintainers have designed their repo to work. If you aren't using the 3rd party repos as directed, then you greatly reduce the chance that the repo maintainer will be able to reproduce and fix the issue... even if users take the time to communicate it to them. And for those of you following along in this discussion who are sentimental to this sort of protectionist prattle, cough gdk cough, let me reiterate what I said in the bugreport, that a default protection policy is a complete and utter waste of time. In fact its damaging in the long run. I garun-goddamn-tee that if a default protection policy gets in the way a 3rd party repo is designed to work on a system, that repo maintainers will craft package scriptlets to disable that protection policy to ensure the repo works as designed. Thus we all lose the ability to use these features to establish are own policies on an as-needed basis. How about this, how about we stop being reactionary and start being proactive. How about we actually craft useful tools to help inexperienced users discover 3rd party repos and to inform them about the organization of that repo and how it will interact with your other repos... BEFORE they suck packages from it? How about we encourage informed decision making by desktop users, BEFORE we decide to enforce Fedora contributor organizational policies on 3rd party repos. We have completely seperated the configuration of a new repo from the important step of understanding what the repo is designed for. Why is that? Why don't we make it so end-users can get repolevel information of merit before they enable that repo..without trolling a website faq? I firmly believe that users are making poor decisions when they choose to use some 3rd party repos because its too damn easy to enable a new repo and suck on it, without doing any due-diligence with regard to reading up on the repo at all. I would rather help them make better informed decisions through clientside tools which incoroprate repolevel information then to pretend that we can control how they interact with other repos. We can not control how 3rd party repos work so we should not pretend by using protectionist policies by default. 3rd party repos exist for a variety of reasons, some of these repos are well known and public.. some of them sit inhouse inside corporate or academic networks. Regardless of the purist attitude we tend to take about putting Core and Extras on a pedestal, the reality is there are situational reasons to replace Core and Extras packages. I do it with my own in-house repos. And if I find one of my users being told to uninstall inhouse packages instead of communicating technical problems back to me.. well lets just say its been a while since I've played softball and I need some batting practise with human head sized targets. We could in fact debate the validity of reasons to replace Core and Extras packages all the live long day, but at the end of the day 3rd party repos control their own policies and structures and we should not enforce our own opinions as to how those repos should be dealing with their userbase. We can establish best practises and associated metrics and tools for users to make their own decisions as to which repos to use based on those best practices. -jef"I'll be damned if I let any individual in the Fedora contributor undo the slow progress towards better communication and cooperation with 3rd party repos without putting up a fight. Biased reactionary protectionist attitudes do not build bridges into the future. Stop looking for the easy way out and start communicating with respect or I'm going to make it my mission to drown you out in every single mailinglist that I can find by posting 14 page long rambling diatribes, so lengthy and obtuse that it will instantly drain whatever passion or interest anyone had in the original topic, which noone will remember 2 pages into my post. All that people will do is skip to my sig and chuckle."spaleta -- Fedora-maintainers mailing list Fedora-maintainers@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-maintainers -- Fedora-maintainers-readonly mailing list Fedora-maintainers-readonly@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-maintainers-readonly
