Fedora Extras vs. CLOSED RAWHIDE

[Michael Schwendt]

On Wed, 04 Aug 2004 12:23:29 +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:

> 1) In exceptional/special cases, Fedora.us/FE should be permitted to
> replace packages from FC if they break other FE packages or are unusable
> in general.

Which effectively would fork FC maintenance. Not good. Users running FC
would get different Core packages than users of FE. Different packages
which may or may not result in different run-time behaviour, for
instance, or break compilation of dependences. You cannot define what
those "exceptional/special cases" are before you run into them. It would
result in a case by case decision finding process. Also keep in mind
that FC's bug-fix update policy is to prefer upstream version upgrades
over backports. And if a bug in FC can be fixed and the community or
[extras] developer community would benefit from a fix, there ought to be
a bug fix release in the obvious place: FC Updates and nowhere else.

> 2) RH/FC commits their packagers to listen to FE's package update
> demands and to benevolently consider to release bug-fix updates once
> such a demand pops up.

Most likely also with contributors preparing and testing the fix.  And
remember, we're discussing general bug fixes, not attempts at massive
version upgrades which would turn a stable FC release into FC Development.
The interesting bit is when a fix is available in Rawhide, who takes
responsibility for pushing the fix as an update to an old FC version?
This is where community QA must kick in and do the necessary regression
testing, too.