Jason Corley wrote:
Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
Which I think illustrates the point that JPackage isn't the upstream for the tomcat5 package, yes?
Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
It seems far more appropriate to say that the Fedora package is derived from JPackage.
Perhaps you two can explain to me the difference between what you
consider package derivation vs. upstream in the context of
packaging... In my mind if you base your package off of the packaging
work of others, those others are (or in this instance should be)
upstream for the package. Again the Fedora/RHEL analogy seems to fit.
It feels like splitting semantic hairs to me but you may have a real
distinction which I'd like to hear. If there is debate there that is
likely the part I'm not understanding, but then I'm just a pig
wallowing in mud so what do I know.
If we were talking about source code it would be the difference between
having an upstream and having a fork. Even though xorg and XFree86
started with the same code base, one is not the upstream for the other.
So in this context, derivation would be if I took a package from
JPackage, Mandriva, etc, had it reviewed for Fedora and then proceeded
to maintain the package in Fedora, syncing against new upstream releases
of the source, fixing bugs reported in the Fedora bugzilla, and
generally, considering the package I'm maintaining in Fedora to be
independent of the package the original work was based on.
Upstream in this context would be when I take a package from an upstream
repository and submit it for Fedora review. Changes implemented in the
review would be pushed back into the upstream package unless they were
truly Fedora-only changes. Once imported and built the normal flow of
events for the package would be to wait for changes from the new
upstream package release (or aid in making new upstream package
releases) and then syncing those to the Fedora package. As packaging
bugs were filed with Fedora, the changes could be made locally and
pushed to the upstream repository's packages or made in the upstream's
packages and then backported to the Fedora package until the next
upstream release.
So using the term upstream says there's an ongoing relationship between
the packages where the Fedora package tracks the changes made in the
upstream package.
The grey area is when a Fedora package tracks changes in another
repository but the packager still thinks of it as an independent work.
This happens more often when a bug occurs in source code and the
packager looks for patches in other distros/repos that can fix the
problem. It could happen in the context we care about here but I don't
think it will happen as often. A package maintainer is used to looking
for help with source code upstream but doing all the work of packaging
themselves -- so a packager who is deriving from JPackage would be more
likely to rely on their own resources or by asking fedora-devel list for
advice while a packager that is using JPackage as an upstream would look
to JPackage's cvs for ideas.
-Toshio
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