I'm willing to commit a big chunk of my packages if SPEC files can be used for multiple distributions/releases and there's infrastructure to avoid having to fork SPEC files if unnecessary. (I don't care about a specific implementation and am open to discuss alternatives)
A big part of the packages don't require a mandatory fork or don't require dist-specific macros. And an even bigger part only has a few macros.
Fedora Extras has to decide whether it will allow those extra macros to make it easier to manage SPEC files or if they fork for each new Fedora release. There are a few drawbacks, but imnsho there are more advantages.
(less maintenance required, more communities/resources involved, RHEL users don't have to fork Fedora stuff and vice versa, ...)
We can examine proposals for additional macros for technical merit after things settle down. Right now I am skeptical, but willing to read and experiment later. No promises though.
Only fork SPEC files when the complexity of maintaining them becomes harder than the complexity of keeping things synchronised.
This is generally how the old fedora.us operated, but things are changing now.
With CVS I personally find it easy to maintain forks in a way similar to how I manage the gaim package in FC4/FC3/RHEL4/FC2/RHEL3. Imposing hard coded distribution names and numbers in .spec makes things far more ugly IMHO.
Warren Togami wtogami@xxxxxxxxxx
