On Wed, 2013-11-06 at 16:33 +0100, Alberto Ruiz wrote: > On Tue, 2013-11-05 at 12:44 -0800, Adam Williamson wrote: > > Haven't read the whole thread yet, but in case it hasn't been said: > > > > "Build a way" would be great. I've said a few times that it'd be nice > > for there to be a cross-distro framework for third-party app > > distribution. > > > > "Promote as the Proper Way To Get Apps On GNOME / Fedora Desktop" would > > NOT be great. Having spent a lot of time thinking about both sides of > > the debate I'm still firmly in the 'coherent distribution is the ideal > > state' camp. > > And I pretty much agree, read my comments below: > > > Upstream distribution is probably never going to go away > > entirely, and it'd be good to make it as painless and reliable as > > possible _where it's really necessary to use it_. But it should never be > > the primary/preferred method of software distribution on Fedora, in my > > opinion. It should always be an exception. > > Application sandboxing/bundling is not mutually exclusive with a > coherent system and with keeping control, it's just not an RPM as we > know it. What we need to acknowledge is that delivering integral parts > of the operating system and delivering third party apps are > fundamentally two different things. > > So once we have sandboxing we can (and should) propose an end user > application delivery channel for those apps so we will keep control > still. The key here is that the mechanisms to deliver an OS component > and an end user should be different. The cadence _is_ different, as an > example, at the LibreOffice team we have a hell of a time because people > complain about bugs that we already fixed and released on an ongoing > basis. In some cases, people are stuck with a specific version of Fedora > and they simply can't get the latest version of a given app eventhough > the new version doesn't require anything that is provided. > > The other problem is that the upstreams don't have a channel to deploy > beta versions, or versions with a specific patch, that you can't install > concurrently because the distributions won't let you. > > So all in all, the key here is to acknowledge that a system level > component (systemd, libjpeg, Qt, NetworkManager) has a completely > different nature than an end user application. The upstream has a > different focus, development cadence, nature and intent, and it is > against the interest of the upstreams and the users to keep delivering > those apps as integral parts of the _operating system_. > > That doesn't mean that there shouldn't be any sort of integration or > gatkeeping, we must have a centralized Fedora/FOSS app bundle channel > that upstreams can use to "certify' their apps against Fedora, if we use > scriptless rpms and yum repositories as a transport layer, in a > different rpmdb than the system wide one, that is an implementation > detail. But the relationship with the upstream and the cadence should be > completely different than a system level rpm. Excellent summary Alberto, I recently felt on my skin what it means to be locked in a buggy version of LiberOffice. Making it simple for user to install the upstream version instead of our bundled one would help *a lot* all free software users. Also from an engineering pov it will make our work in Fedora less heavy allowing us to improve the core OS. Simo. -- Simo Sorce * Red Hat, Inc * New York -- devel mailing list devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
