On Tue, 2004-08-03 at 20:08, Michael Schwendt wrote: > On Tue, 03 Aug 2004 17:12:10 +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote: > > > Some examples: > > > > * In some cases such "known bugs" prevent Fedora Extras to supply > > packages for downstream releases, because the officially released > > packages the Fedora Extras packages are based on are broken. > > > > E.g. "missing shared libs in ghostview" > > http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=88175 > > break gsview for FC1 > > https://bugzilla.fedora.us/show_bug.cgi?id=1940 > > Though, in this case the extra package should not have been released for > FC1. The explicit dependency on a shared library soname should not have > passed QA for FC1. ACK, in this case, FE's QA has failed. Nevertheless, it has revealed a known problem ("CLOSED RAWHIDE") in FC1's ghostscript, on which the RH packager formerly had decided that it were not important enough to the public to justify a public update. IMO, both are separate problems: * The former is a failure that should not have happened, however such failures are inevitable and for sure will happen again. Here, FE is challenged to improve it's QA. * The latter is a different kind of problem: - Individual perception of the "importance on a bug" is subjective. - "Importance of a bug" is subject to change over time. Before FE, there basically were 2 parties: RH + individual users. RH could afford to close bugs "CLOSED RAWHIDE" when a bug did not affect the "masses", while individual users having been affected by such a bug could individually pickup "unofficial fixes" from upstream/rawhide. With FE, the situation has changed: There now are 3 parties: RH/FC + FE + individual users. 1) One can argue that FE is just another arbitrary "individual user". OK, no problem at all. Then FE has to be allowed to apply the work-around individual users had to apply before FE: Replace packages from FC by packages from upstream/rawhide. => FE's policy has to be changed 2) FE is a privileged "3rd party" closely interacting with RH/FC. In this case FE has to be enabled to influence decisions having been taken by RH/FC. => RH/FC has to implement formal means for FE to do so. Another approach would be FE to ignore such problems and not to try working around such bugs. => FE can not provide any packages that are affected by such bugs. > > IMO, it would be best if RH/FC would prefer not to close bugs as "CLOSED > > RAWHIDE" when ever reasonable/applicable and to officially upgrade the > > package instead. > > Alternatively, it could also be worth to consider handing over such a > > package to "Fedora Extra" for "interim band-aid packages". > > No. That would make it a Fedora Core bug-fix update and would not be an > extra package. Updates to Fedora Core must not be released in Fedora > Extras. That's fedora.us's current policy. I feel excluding changes in FE's policy at this point in time would be a mistake (cf. above). Having read Michael Tiemann's draft and struggling with "CLOSED RAWHIDE" bugs as a contributor to FE (and as an "ordinary user"), I see a need for changes in both FC's and FE's policies. Ralf
