My thoughts on repotag

[Dag Wieers]

On Mon, 19 Mar 2007, Michael Schwendt wrote:

> On Mon, 19 Mar 2007 08:38:09 +0100 (CET), Dag Wieers wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, 18 Mar 2007, Tom 'spot' Callaway wrote:
> > 
> > > It seems like everyone keeps asking me in private to speak on the topic
> > > of using a repotag for EPEL, probably since I'm the one who decided to
> > > not use one for Fedora Extras (the decision predates the Fedora
> > > Packaging Committee).
> > > 
> > > The first problem I have with overloading Release with a repotag is that
> > > we start to play games between repositories:
> > > 
> > > foo-1.0.0-1.el5.epel < foo-1.0.0-1.el5.notepel
> > > 
> > > Is it really? Nah. This is just RPM trying to make sense of what we've
> > > shoved in there.
> > 
> > If that really is a concern, then you loose anyway by not having one.
> > 
> > 	foo-1.0.0-1.el5 < foo-1.0.0-1.el5.rf
> > 
> > Besides this case is only useful when releases are identical, which often 
> > they aren't and there is no reason to assume that:
> > 
> > 	foo-1.0.0-4.el5 > foo-1.0.0-2.el5.rf
> > 
> > either. So whatever the point is, a repotag simply does not affect the 
> > version comparison in an important way, because releases from different 
> > repositories simply cannot be compared. Any attempt doing that is 
> > brain surgery. Higher does not mean better, besides RPMforge looses anyway 
> > because most packages have a release of 1, while EPEL seldom has 1.
> > 
> > Moot artificial point.
> 
> Is it? No, it is not. It is a real-world example.

It makes not difference what the release is. Whether it influences the 
release comparison or not, releases cannot be compared between 
repositories. There is no relation.

A repotag makes no difference in a relation that doesn't exist.


> It still fails for branch-specific (i.e. dist-specific) fixes, where the
> least-significant portion of the full %release value is increased for
> rebuilds or minor fixes:
> 
>  	foo-1.0.0-2.el5.fdr.1 < foo-1.0.0-2.el5.rf

Then you assume that minor numbers are behind the repotag, which is a bad 
implementation.

 
> In the past, the proponents of mandatory dist tags have ignored that issue
> or have tried to fight it with their main counter-argument that updates
> are applied to all branches always. Mass-updates *always*.
> 
> As I've explained before, more tags at the right of %release don't solve
> the repository mixing problems. 

But it doesn't affect it either. The example you gave was a bad example. 
disttags and repotags are at the far right.


> They only try to hide the fundamental problem. The primary goal, once
> again, seems to be to add something mandatory to package names, which
> makes users point the finger at a specific repo when they run into
> repository mixing problems. Instead, it would be much better if
> repositories collaborated actually and shared common packages with
> the common goal of eliminating upgrade problems, conflicts, and
> redundant package development.

That's fine. Then the question is: why is Fedora creating EPEL packages?
Why does Fedora mandate CentOS and not the other way around ?

And we start from base one again.

Kind regards,
--   dag wieers,  dag at wieers.com,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
[all I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power]