Kind request: fix your packages

[Sean Middleditch]

On Wed, 2003-10-01 at 13:00, Wil Cooley wrote:
> On Wed, 2003-10-01 at 09:17, Bill Nottingham wrote:
> > Axel Thimm (Axel.Thimm at physik.fu-berlin.de) said: 
> > > I'll also go with your suggestion, Rex. I'd call it the "it's written
> > > rh10, but it is pronounced Fedora Core 1" idiom ...
> > 
> > Now that's just patently misleading. It's *not* Red Hat Linux 10,
> > it's Fedora Core 1. It's a shift in the development model, shifts
> > in the goals of the release, and more. Hence, the new name, and
> > new version.
> 
> Yeah, but the actual collection of RPMs and installer aren't going to be
> completely new; in almost cases, they will just be upgrades.  Versions
> ought apply to file releases, not development models, goals, names, ...,
> especially when there won't be a radical break in the actual conventions
> used with existing releases.  (I.e., package files aren't going to be
> forced into 8.3 names or AIX-style names).

I'm still seriously confused what people are smoking.  The only thing
changing is the name of the distro, which isn't important for any
package dependencies at all in any way except the distro-related
packages like fedora-release, which third party packagers certainly
aren't going to be providing as add-ons.

*no* normal packages are changing versions from 9->1.0, and
dependencies/versioning have absolutely no reason to care about the
release version.  it's user information only, not stuff software should
care about - if the software does, then the software is broken.

If your package needs to be compiled differently for different versions
of Red Hat/Fedora, it's because packages in those releases are different
- use *those* packages and *their* versions for your dependency
tracking, *and* your release name - foo-rh8.0.i686.rpm is meaningless
since those usually install and run on rh9 and fc1 anyhow.  The real
dependency is another package(-set), like gnome2.0 vs gnome2.4, or
apache1.3 vs apache2 - depend on those, and use those in your package
names if you need different packages (foo-gnome2.0.i686.rpm).  Then you
completely sidestep the distro versions, *which you should've done
anyways*, since distro version is *completely meaningless* to anyone but
a human.  Or badly built packages.

Packages depend on other packages, not the text in /etc/*-release.  Fix
your packages and move on to complain about real problems.  ;-)

> 
> Maybe if it were a true fork--a clean break started by a completely
> different set of people--resetting the version counter would be
> reasonable.  But as it is, Fedora Core is still going to be under the
> auspices of Red Hat, Inc.--still subject to the good taste that Red Hat,
> Inc. has generally shown.  For all intents and purposes, it's going to
> look like what "Red Hat Linux 10" would have looked like had Fedora not
> happened.
> 
> Wil
-- 
Sean Middleditch <elanthis at awesomeplay.com>
AwesomePlay Productions, Inc.