On Feb 26, 2005, seth vidal <skvidal@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > What do the things I try to contribute have to do with my belief that > extras functions? You maintain libtool and a number of compiler-related > functions. Does this mean you are not to be trusted about the state of > the compilers? No, it means that if people moved features out of say the kernel claiming they could be implemented by the compiler or glibc, I wouldn't feel as uncomfortable because I could implement them myself if I had the time and inclination to do so. I'm at an advantage position in this regard. Just like you're at an advantage position WRT Fedora Extras. > I believe extras functions b/c they are are over 901 packages in > extras. See, the problem is not in extras. It works perfectly well, and there's very little to improve other than the creation of ISOs at about the same time as the release. The problem is in Core, that's missing essential features to make Extras a seamless part of the distro. Such features are scheduled to FC5, but nevertheless we're pushing useful packages from Core to Extras as if this would have no impact on anyone. As if the seamless integration was already in place. This is the mistake I'm disputing. My solution is to just bring the packages that were removed out of the madness to shrink the Core to an arbitrary limit. It's not shrinking the distro (Core + Extras), just pushing bits around, making some of them less convenient to get to. Sure having CDs of Extras available for download would address part of the problem: people would still be able to ask friends with big pipes to download and burn CDs for them. But how convenient is the experience of installing packages from such CDs be? Anaconda won't be able to install packages from such CDs; will system-config-packages? How about yum, will it require messing with yum config files, or does it have magic to resolve deps and install packages from a collection of CDs that have dep closure as a whole, but not individually? (i.e., I want to install package foo that's in CD2, but that depends on bar that's in CD1) >> That's hardly the case for the typical Fedora user. In fact, if I >> knew there was only one person on Earth (or in the universe!) that was >> happy about the usability of the current Fedora Extras, my first guess >> would be you, and the second would probably be Bill Gates :-) > This is just bizarre. In case the point of the joke was not clear, I think this rush to move packages out of the Core before the Core is ready for Extras will make Fedora as a whole worse, and anything that makes a GNU/Linux distro probably makes Bill Gates a richer man. > 1. the distro is 5 isos - they spend 8 yrs downloading 5 isos to install > about 30% of the packages available on them > - they've wasted a lot of time and probably made a number of coasters > in the process. Just because I'm a pedant, make that 4.5 isos, which was the original space figure we had. You don't have to download the second half of the last CD, so what we're saving is not 2 years of download (heh :-), just half a year or so. > So if we're worried about users with limited bandwidth then we would > want the latter. Which means putting fewer packages in core. Sure. As soon as the Core is ready. Besides, there's always the option of downloading the individual packages, or perform an HTTP install using a local web proxy. If you don't have a lot of bandwidth but can wait for 5 years for the install to complete, that's probably the way to go. For such users, whether something is in Core or Extras makes little difference, except for updates possibly breaking working packages. > b. it's 4 isos their FAVORITE package is not there - so they ask the > friend to burn them a cd of a chunk of things from extras. Heck, if the > friend is really nice s/he can get a list of what they need, run > repoclosure on it across base + extras and then run createrepo on the cd > before handing it over. Then s/he knows that the user has all they need. > The user pops in the cd, runs and adds a repo to their yum.repos.d and > they're cooking with gas. If it fits in a single CD, or each CD is made repo-closed, yes. > either. They don't have lots of things. I'm sorry, but hey, maybe > someone wants to make isos of Extras like the user with the friend in > the case above. They can't. And nobody can, if I'm reading the Fedora trademark guidelines. Yeah, we should fix that. But fine, someone could burn select rpms into CDs for friends. But companies can't create Extras CDs fitting certain profiles and sell them, or distribute them with magazines, using the Fedora name. > b. the distro is 5 isos - they have their FAVORITE package, but they > still can't play ascii art video files. So maybe someone volunteering to > look at isos of extras is the right solution. It would help, but as I explained above, we still need better tools. > hey, wait a second. You're a programmer aren't you? Allegedly :-) > would you like to contribute to fedora extras? I bet you could come > up with a way to make isos from Fedora Extras! Hey, I know we have some Python scripts to create the Core CDs! Why couldn't we just tell it to take packages from the Extras pool as well, and roll a single set of CDs? Wouldn't that be cool? :-) > That's fantastic, thanks for volunteering instead of just being another > complaining voice w/o a solution. The solution that many of us have been proposing is to revert the not-well-thought-out rush to shrink Core before the tools are ready to make Extras a seamless part of the distro. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org} Free Software Evangelist oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}
