What do we think of this?

[Rahul Sundaram]

Greg Dekoenigsberg wrote:
> 
> http://www.oreillynet.com/linux/blog/2007/03/where_fedora_went_wrong.html
> 
> Michael Schwendt has made a spirited and passionate response (thanks, 
> Michael) to Caitlyn's comments.
> 
> Is there any substance to these comments?

Sure, there is.

* Out of sync mirrors - Should be solved by better mirror management 
systems being tested currently. Yum fails with a missing dependency 
error or keeps downloading packages which fail checksums due to the 
package being outdated and iterating through mirrors otherwise which 
doesn't give a good impression and often is blamed as a "yum issue".

* Updates with missing dependencies (this is rare but happens on 
occasions due to some issue with the current update system which fails 
to catch this), package evr issues and missing gpg signatures. Expected 
to be solved via the new update system which Luke Macken agreed to take 
on. Not sure of its current status but the plan was to have this in 
place before the Fedora 7 release.

* Mixing of incompatible third party repositories or conflict between 
Fedora repositories and a third party repository when a new package is 
introduced in the formal Fedora repositories - I suspect there are no 
easy answers to this. If we can coordinate better we should.

The core/extras merge and resulting common infrastructure would make the 
process much better. If other features are in place before Fedora 7 
release we are good.


Rahul