On Thu, 05 Aug 2004 04:57:08 +0200, Ralf Corsepius <rc040203@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > The problem is: RH/FC not having fixed "known bugs" prevents > Fedora.US/FE from publishing packages for FC1. I'm personally not all that thrilled at having FE packagers target publishing any new packages in current or old FC releases. I think new FE publishing should target FC development and FE 'releases' should freeze out on the same timescales as FC instead of obsessing over trying to continue to base work on an FC release that is 1 or 2 month away from being officially EOLd. The more FE packages that get introduced against the development tree... the less post-release problems with Core we will have with FE long term. Continuing to add NEW extras against an FC release is how we break upgrade paths when Core consumes new functionality in development that was in the past in extras. If Core+Extras ends up looking like a rolling release like i use to see with ximian desktop, I'm going to puke my guts out. I hate the rolling release model with rpm packages. You sneak in a packaging fix thats meant to fix something else, don't do enough QA and every user ends up having to try to do a package rollbacks for several packages. No thanks. I'll chew my own arm off first. > I am talking about fixing an FC package to make it possible at all to > get a new FE package for FC < FC(CURRENT) published. And i think this has to be case by case...its grey. Im going to be wicked pissed, if I as a user have to download megs of updates just to fix a packaging error that could have been worked around in the new FE package by the packagers. > Right, this situation can't completely excluded, but if developers don't > work too careless, the risk is pretty small. Thats pure optimizism on your part. If people were happy and shiny and communicated well we wouldn't have 90% of the griping we have on this list, and certaintly not this thread. Waving a magic policy wand deeming that people will change in this regard is extremely wishful thinking. > You don't develop on packages for FC1, I presume? FC1 is at best a month away from EOL (though im none too happy that there hasnt been an actual FIRM date about FC1 EOL but ill save that for another debate) if anyone is still considering building new packages against FC1 at this point, its seems a foolhardy goal. > I am not - It prevents Fedora.US/FE from releasing packages, while other > 3rd parties are able to ship them (They replace the RH supplied FC1 > packages). 3rd party packagers are NOT going away. This is NOT a competition with what 3rd party packagers can and can not do. The issues with non-free and non-US packages that Fedora refuses to ship is a big enough space to keep 3rd party packagers in business as a popular place for users to get things. Fedora can't compete with 3rd parties when it comes to instant user gratification. We shouldn't pretend that it can. What we are talking about here, corner cases invovling packaging bugs is not going to make or break the issue of 3rd party repos. I am much more concerned about long term issues associated with a growing fedora development model so that community developers are focused on looking ahead instead of looking backwards. > IMO, this substantially weakens Fedora.US/FE and therefore causes damage > the Fedora Project as a whole in longer terms. I think 6 month EOL's for Core make any argument about long term projhect damage a little thin. Legacy with its current manpower and infrastructure can't handle legacy issues with FE packages. Michael has already said that there is reluctance currently for fedora.us package maintainers to continue to support packages in a legacy situations. Fedora Core's timescale are extremely aggressive and push people to move to the next release very quickly. I think the development model as a whole does better long term, if new Fedora Extras development focuses continually on the Core development tree, instead of dragging attention backwards to suppliment Core releases that have already been frozen out. If new packages can be built painlessly for Core releases that are still active, great. If not,I think Fedora Alternatives as defined in the terminology page fills the corner cases you are concerned about in situations where Core developers don't want to push an update. -jef
