QA process was Re: RPM submission procedure

[Michael Schwendt]

On Fri, 09 Jan 2004 14:20:16 -0500, Karl DeBisschop wrote:

> On Fri, 2004-01-09 at 13:59, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> > On Fri, 9 Jan 2004 20:05:06 +0200 (EET), Panu Matilainen wrote:
> > 
> > > The amount of nitpicking trusted developers produce 
> > > (among themselves) is enough to scare off anybody starting in packaging 
> > > I'm willing to bet :)
> > 
> > This must change, although often it is separated between suggestions and
> > blocker criteria. But at the same time, new packagers should not come
> > with slightly modified packages from e.g. Mandrake Cooker which bzip2 even
> > the smallest patch, or generic packages which contain dozens of lines of
> > conditional code which tries to adapt to a build environment.
> 
> Is this rejection of generic packages official policy?

There is nothing like "rejection". Unless it's software which cannot be
included due to patenting or licencing issues. 

But back to generic packages as described by me roughly, find someone
who's willing to review them on a low level. It really is no fun to spend
time on something which looks unnecessary. We build for Fedora Core (and
Red Hat Linux) only, not for Distribution ABC which requires different
packaging and which uses additional helper tools.

> Somehow it seems to me contrary to the idea that Fedora stresses
> upstream bugfixes.

I fail to see the connection between a spec file mess and integrating
bug-fixes upstream.

Apart from that, not everything you ship upstream is included.

> I think of it this way: as a developer, I cannot possibly package well
> for all distros, but I may be able to package well for the one or ones I
> use heavily. Nonetheless, as a developer, I have to maintain the code in
> single units that is readily packaged by many distros, not just the one
> I happen to use.

Then -- as a developer -- make your software be trivial to package.

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