Hi everyone, in particular those involved at fedora.us and pre-Extras! While Fedora Extras is still being prepared, here are some thoughts which accumulated over the past few days: PACKAGE SUBMISSIONS The official package submission policies and workflow for Fedora Extras are not known yet. Those who have submitted new packages at bugzilla.redhat.com instead of bugzilla.fedora.us are too early. At fedora.us we've had at least a documented procedure. In bugzilla at redhat.com we don't. But as some form of guidance, please do not ignore existing fedora.us documents completely. There's a good bit of information included with regard to package QA and packaging hints. PACKAGE REQUESTS Every package in Fedora Extras needs at least one maintainer (read: package owner). It is beyond the existing project resources to pick up arbitrary packages found on web sites. If you have a wish list of what ought to be included, discuss this on fedora-extras-list please and maybe somebody steps up as the package maintainer. Naturally, those fine people who support upstream projects with Fedora Core specific packages, are likely the candidates who would also like to maintain a package in Fedora Extras. UNMOTIVATED PACKAGERS It is a pain trying to support new contributors and their package submissions, when someone doesn't reply to feedback or seems to drop off after a first submission. If you decide to stay away or not maintain your included package anymore, please be so fair and inform the project members and the community, so an unmaintained package can be removed or taken over by somebody else. Included packages at some point of time had been reviewed and approved. It would be a pitty to lose them. Whether due to impatience, whether due to disappointment of Fedora Extras progress, whether due to intricate procedures and workflow management, please only join and submit packages or contributions if you are serious about supporting the project, even during somewhat difficult times. It should be clear that with limited infrastructure (such as type of build system and access to it, bugzilla upload procedures instead of direct CVS access), it would be necessary to bridge the period of time till Fedora Extras provides superior infrastructure. EXISTING PACKAGE SUBMISSIONS, http://fedora.us/QA With regard to the many packages in the queue, there has been no slavedriver at fedora.us who forces contributors to review arbitrary packages. At fedora.us we're all volunteers. But the package submission policies recommend that in order to gain experience and trust, packagers should exchange reviews with eachother. Where that doesn't happen and where nobody reviews a package, no progress is made. PACKAGE UPDATES, Fedora pre-Extras Since only a handful of project contributors outside Red Hat have write access to the Fedora Extras CVS till official ways for getting access are announced, it would be necessary that existing package owners approach one of these when they want to commit updates. You should be able to do that via bugzilla Cc or private mail. If I'm informed correctly, the six people (and their bugzilla e-mail addresses) are: Damien Nade <anvil@xxxxxxxxx> Phillip Compton <pcompton@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Matthias Saou <matthias@xxxxxxxxxxxx> Michael Schwendt <bugs.michael@xxxxxxx> Ville Skyttä <ville.skytta@xxxxxx> Thomas Vander Stichele <thomas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> The list of current package owners can be displayed in bugzilla. PACKAGE UPGRADES, Fedora pre-Extras Where version upgrades are requested or suggested by users, we need to find new ways of doing QA. For instance, library upgrades affect all existing dependencies, and these are not always maintained by the same person. If not in bugzilla, communication channels outside bugzilla (e.g. on fedora-extras-list) need to be established. Michael -- Fedora Core release 2 (Tettnang) - Linux 2.6.10-1.9_FC2 loadavg: 0.38 0.98 0.95
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