2009/8/4 Toshio Kuratomi <a.badger@xxxxxxxxx>: > Note: This is probably more of a fedora-devel-list topic. No way for > you to know that, just looking in from the outside, though :-) I must admit I just did a quick look... it's my experience that you never get it right no matter how hard you try :-p > On 08/01/2009 09:41 AM, Cristian Morales Vega wrote: >> Hi, >> >> I'm not a Fedora user, but looking at the repositories I saw that you >> update things like KDE in a regular basis. That's uncommon, distros as >> Ubuntu, Mandriva or openSUSE just release security updates and fixes >> for really important bugs (frightened about the possibility of >> upstream breaking ABI compatibility by error). At the same time I saw >> some packages not updated... so, which exactly is the Fedora updates >> policy? > > This is up to maintainer discretion. In some cases individual SIGs > (Special Interest Groups) manage a specific set of dependent packages. > (KDE is largely this way). > >> What I'm most interested in is knowing if a package built against a >> base (not updated) Fedora install is guaranteed to work with an >> updated Fedora system. > > No. It's generally frowned upon to make incompatible updates but it's > not unheard of. Many maintainers prefer to go to the latest version > rather than backporting security fixes which can break compatibility > (mozilla/xulrunner/firefox is this way, for instance). > >> And, when you release an update to the latest >> version of Amarok, is it built against the original distro/KDE or the >> updated one? > > The updated one. > >> If you release an update from KDE 4.2.2 to 4.2.3, a new >> Amarok package is also released (without changes, only rebuilt against >> the new KDE)? >> > If the libraries are supposed to be compatible and there is not a new > Amarok package we won't recompile Amarok. > >> One cause I ask is because the openSUSE Build Service builds >> everything against the original, not updated, Fedora. Is this a >> problem? >> > Yes. Depending on what libraries your package depends on, you could end > up with a package that does not work on an updated Fedora. > > Within Fedora we have three repositories for any given release. The > actual release repo has the packages that were available at the time of > release with whatever QA and other testing that we did at that point. > The official livecd's, install cds, spins, etc are composed from this > tree. Then we have an update repo and an updates-testing repo. Updated > packages and new packages generally go to updates-testing and then are > pushed to updates after a few weeks. > > If you're building a third party package it would make the most sense > from a Fedora user's point of view to act like you're part of the normal > Fedora update stream -- thus your package should build against and run > with the package set that's in the updates repository. However, it's > harder for you to coordinate this than a package within Fedora as Fedora > package maintainers can be proactive about checking which packages > depend on theirs whenever they issue an incompatible update -- they > can't be proactive about checking which third party packages their > update will break. Thanks, that answers all my doubts. I have asked in the openSUSE Build Service about this, perhaps they can do something to improve the situation. -- Fedora-packaging mailing list Fedora-packaging@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-packaging
