@FESCo (and in parts maybe for the Board, too): How to handle packaging issues for EPEL?

[Michael Schwendt]

On Sun, 18 Mar 2007 18:19:19 +0100, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:

> > It has not been decided on fedora-usermgmt before. Neither by FESCO, nor
> > by the Packaging Committee. It remains an optional tool that is not
> > mentioned in the guidelines.
> 
> But some people want to forbid it now, so seems we need a decision now.

So what? EPEL has different [and special] requirements anyway. I've
written more about that in one of the threads about fedora-usermgmt.

EPEL may decide independently on such things. If, however, it is about
something in the Fedora guidelines, we should be careful when we want to
keep a close relationship with RHEL.

fedora-usermgmt is not in the guidelines yet.

> > It has not been decided on "a repotag" before.
> 
> But some people want to enforce one now, so seems we need a decision now.

2x now is not true, however. The repotag issue is not a show-stopper.

> > If I understand the request correctly, there is the desire to make a repotag
> > mandatory. When doing that, it would conflict with an optional %dist tag.
> 
> Why? It could be in the spec files as
> 
> Release: 1%{?dist}%{?rel}
> 
> or something like that.

Both values, if defined and expanded, are added to the %{release} value
wherever that one is used, e.g. in sub-package requirements and automatic
dependencies. When %dist remains optional, you compare %dist and %rel or
vice versa. In manually added versioned dependencies (or also Obsoletes
and Provides), both macros are omitted. In the %changelog they are
omitted, too.

[As a side-note, it is already worse enough when packagers copy a
%dist-ified spec file for one dist to another dist, wiping and overwriting
previous changelog entries.]