Hi. I've been silent so far, while mostly agreeing with the "let's just drop Modularity" proposal. This post hit a nerve, so I felt compelled to reply. On Monday, 11 November 2019 at 19:24, Stephen Gallagher wrote: > On Mon, Nov 11, 2019 at 1:15 PM Robbie Harwood <rharwood@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: [...] > > It's really frustrating to be repeatedly told we're not arguing in good > > faith and then see things like this (from today's fesco meeting [1]): > > > > 15:48:07 <sgallagh> Can we please stop pretending like "start over > > from scratch" is a real option? > > > > Starting from scratch should be an option. Removing modularity entirely > > should be an option. Of course, so should be using modularity as it > > exists (or modifying it), but if we don't have those first two as > > options when there are proponents, this isn't a real technical > > discussion. > > That quote is not fully in context, but that's entirely fair because I > didn't include enough context during the FESCo meeting. I apologize > for that. (Also, as you can tell from the rest of the log, I was > getting frustrated by that point). > > When I said it's not a real option, I did not include any of my > reasoning (thus Begging the Question as you rightly point out). My > reasoning is basically this: > > * Everyone on the Modularity Team is being paid by Red Hat to work on > Modularity. > * Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 shipped with Modularity. > * The Modularity Team is responsible for maintaining that in RHEL 8 > regardless of what happens in Fedora. None of the above should matter for the purpose of selecting the best technical solution to the current issues, even if it means admitting that Modularity as currently implemented is causing too many issues that can't be fixed in reasonable time and abandoning it altogether. > * A full redesign in Fedora is not realistically possible with the > people and resources we have available to us while also maintaining > the current implementation for ten years. Then just drop it. SCLs are an example of a Red Hat-only solution. Modularity tried to do better and failed in Fedora, so let it remain Red Hat-only, too, while an even better solution is invented. Or, perhaps, as various folks have been saying, maybe Fedora just doesn't need SCLs, Modularity or any similar solutions. Let Red Hat cater to its corporate customers and experiment with Red Hat-specific solutions in CentOS and let Fedora not be constrained by what makes sense only in a LTS enterprise distribution. > * Therefore we are focused on trying to get the current implementation > into better shape (and/or finding a safe migration strategy to a new > solution) rather than start from an entirely green field. If you mean "we, the Modularity team" then I can understand, but still the option to just drop the whole thing from Fedora looks more appealing than just wasting more time and effort on piling up technical debt. Sound arguments were made against some of the stated goals of Modularity like private buildroot packages and the rest can be implemented using the existing tools. I fail to see what advantages Modularity has brought us so far, while the disadvantages are pretty clear. Regards, Dominik -- Fedora https://getfedora.org | RPM Fusion http://rpmfusion.org There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles. -- from "Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan _______________________________________________ devel mailing list -- devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
