RFE: more FC4 Requests

[Dag Wieers]

Michael A. Peters wrote:

> On 11/16/2004 01:13:45 AM, Troels Arvin wrote:
>
> >  On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 00:35:00 -0500, Phillip Compton wrote:
> >
> > > scribus - DTP
> > > inkscape - Vector Graphics
> > > lcms - Color Management
> >
> > I don't know about lcms, but the others sound like candidates for
> > Fedora Extras, as they aren't exactly "core" components.
> >
> > By the way: I consider it _very_ sad that the Fedora Extras project
> > doesn't collaborate with projects like FreshRPMS, Dag's repository,
> > etc.
> > (sometimes collectively called 'rpmforge'). Such lack of collaboration
> > makes it very difficult for me to see Fedora Extras as a "community
> > project" - which is its very purpose, as I understand it. 
>
> In a nutshell the reason as I see it is this -

Let me hand you some glasses.


> Fedora has a protocol that they follow regarding package naming, package 
> building, and package testing which is very clearly outlined in the 
> Fedora documentations. This involves an outline QA process packages have 
> to go to.

Excuse me ? Fedora nor Red Hat followed a naming policy. There haven't 
been enough samples recently to conclude that this has changed. I did not 
say that there wasn't a policy, but if there was, it was never followed 
(or changed frequently).

Furthermore, when we had these discussions in the beginning at the 
fedora.us mailinglist, my naming policy went much further and was much 
stricter (much like Mandrake/Debian) than was proposed by fedora.us. 
(close to none). I wish you were there, you may have agreed with my 
proposal :)

Regarding the QA process, I don't agree with the current QA process that 
has been put in place, which partly explains the huge backlog. A lot of 
what is required from QA people can easily be automated and my stance on 
this is, first automate, then enforce policies. And if you work with 
volunteers, double the importance for boring tasks.

Also look at Matthias his experience and then tell me why I should import 
1800 packages now ?


> For Fedora to "cooperate" with third party packagers, they would need to 
> throw that process to the side for packages that have to be redone in 
> order to work with dag or freshrpm's etc. - and that's a bad thing, the 
> policy and guidelines they have are there for a reason, and that reason 
> is to provide a stable set of packages for those users who need a stable 
> repository to work with.

Your passage raises a lot of questions:

Why do they have to throw that process to the side ?
Is communicating inside fedora.us inherently easier than outside ?
Why ? Is it hard to include me, even when a package is based on mine ?

You seem to imply I am against policies and guidelines which can only 
indicate you were not involved in any discussions. Besides isn't what is 
inside the guidelines more important then the mere fact of having them ?

And are you implying my users do not need a stable repository to work with 
? :)


> Fedora already offers a way for these other repositories to integrate 
> with Fedora - they can introduce themselves to the list, and submit 
> packages to the fedora repository, going through the Fedora QA process 
> to do so. That is how the Fedora community works.

No I cannot submit my packages to the fedora.us repository, my current 
packages work for older Fedora release, older Red Hat release and RHEL. 
Submitting it to fedora.us is simply not possible because fedora.us has no 
standards to allow for that. I've proposed some more stuff at the very 
beginning, all utterly ignored.


> If dag and freshrpms's etc. want to cooperate together, that's fine - 
> that's even good. But Fedora has a published established way for 
> integrating with Fedora, and Fedora can not be expected to test all 
> possible scenarios of packages installed from third parties.

You don't need to test all possible scenarios, we don't test all possible 
scenarios, there are better ways to prevent conflicts and believe me, 
excluding 3rd parties is causing MORE HARM than playing together. And 
that's exactly what upset me the most about the RepositoryMixing document, 
the document alone has probably been the biggest cause of conflicts and 
problems because it adviced fedora.us packagers NOT to cooperate and it 
told users to blame the 3rd party repositories for NOT joining.

BTW It's also not a nice gesture if you are a community, excluding the 
biggest providers of packages. They've characterized me as not willing to 
submit my packages (another nice gesture), but have ignored all my reasons 
why I cannot...

Also explain me why I spend 3 months or more on the fedora.us mailinglist, 
like so many other existing packagers (matthias, axel, rudolf, fernando, 
russ, ..) and each one of them apparently decided not to. Not willing ? 
Russ even started his own distribution (cAos) after writing proposals for 
the buildsystem, after having been ignored and after having implemented 
the same idea on his own.

Believe me, if I wasn't interested I would not have bothered to join the 
discussions and write proposals and basicly wasted my time when most of 
the decisions were taken unilaterally.

If you think I'm bitter, you bet I am :)

--   dag wieers,  dag at wieers.com,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
[Any errors in spelling, tact or fact are transmission errors]