On Wed, 9 Apr 2008, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
Packaging conventions and rules, I guess.
I like the idea of the Fedora music sig a lot, but it seems to be in a
half-half state. I realise I'm being ridiculously critical here, because I
haven't contributed. But it feels like it took the best things from CCRMA
and made them more 'generic' and not as specialised. I may be wrong.
Maybe this is a fair point.
Really, I first envisioned this as a way to help bring CCRMA and Fedora
together. Because the fact is, most of the CCRMA stuff should live in
Fedora anyway. But the fact that CCRMA requires the RT kernel and other
non-standard stuff may make that difficult.
I don't think it is the kernel itself. After all I think all apps will
work fine on a stock Fedora kernel. They will not be able to run
reliably at low latencies but they will run. The "problem" (if there is
any) is a combination of many other factors.
The real question, to me, is what about CCRMA makes it impossible to roll
the CCRMA bits directly into Fedora proper? And what can we do to fix
those things?
I can only bring my own point of view here.
I don't think there is anything of a technical nature that prevents any
packages from moving (ignoring any non-free dependency stuff, of
course).
Probably what is needed is more packagers that also use the stuff in day
to day music-making (BTW, I'm not complaining about current packagers),
and are commited to maintaining packages in the long term. And keeping
on top of new versions as they are released. That is what makes Planet
CCRMA tick. But packaging is notoriously unsexy stuff to do. I know.
Yep. And yet, we've got hundreds of volunteers doing exactly that in the
Fedora world. There are many open questions about the quality of these
packages, though.
I currently don't see an advantage in maintaining packages _myself_ in
the Fedora environment as opposed to the Planet CCRMA system. It takes
far longer to do anything, or at least that is my perception. Maybe it
is because of lack of knowledge - I have not even caught up to the move
from plague to koji! (pretty pathetic, I know), but I don't have (m)any
cycles to burn on what I perceive to be non-essential stuff.
This is a fair point. And there's no advantage at all if the new system
simply forces you to adopt a new system, when the old system worked
perfectly well for you.
No, the only way there's benefit is if you get hands to help you maintain
packages.
In the time it takes to discuss if we should release ardour 2.4 on f8 (I
don't think we ever saw 2.3.1, right?) to the masses I released a
testing version for fc6/7/8 in the Planet CCRMA repositories[*]. And I
used to be a lot more on top of releases (ie: Planet CCRMA moves quite
slowly these days :-).
And to the point. Why not release ardour 2.4 on f8? Is it because it has
new features and those should be reserved to f9? Why? Users probably
want to use them _now_ and not wait till f9 comes out, at least the kind
of users I have (used to have?) on Planet CCRMA. Or is it because it may
be unstable? As if all the software in Fedora is stable, right? :-p
Heh.
So again, there are tradeoffs that come with using Fedora itself. One of
those tradeoffs is accepting, or arguing about, a bunch of policies. The
alleged benefit for you, Nando, would be to cut your workload by a
significant amount. But that clearly isn't happening.
Do we want Fedora/Music to be rock stable? Or do we want a fast moving
music environment that keeps up to the latest and greatest? The later
would seem more "in tune" with Fedora itself and is what I used to do on
Planet CCRMA...
And to do it, how do we keep track of the latest and greatest and
release it fast?
Good questions.
It may well be that CCRMA should continue to be fully independent, but
have a much stronger base of Fedora packages to draw from, and Nando, when
you see fit, you can supersede a Fedora package with a newer package in
CCRMA. That would be a pretty good outcome, too.
Basically: you're doing awesome work, maybe the best work in the Linux
music space, and we at Fedora need to continue to find incremental ways to
lighten your load without getting in your way.
How many CCRMA packages currently have Fedora analogues at this point,
anyway?
--g
--
Greg DeKoenigsberg
Community Development Manager
Red Hat, Inc. :: 1-919-754-4255
"To whomsoever much hath been given...
...from him much shall be asked"
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