Does Core have an accurate count of packages which are built against libraries from firefox?

Thorsten Leemhuis fedora at leemhuis.info
Wed Dec 27 06:04:44 UTC 2006


Hi all!

BTW, I added "the firefox updates in stable often breaks quite some
packages (galeon, liferia, ...); do we need some kind of task force that
steps up to rebuild the stuff? Same for kmods!" to the FESCo schedule
some days ago already ;-)

Gianluca Sforna schrieb:
> On 12/26/06, Jeff Spaleta <jspaleta at gmail.com> wrote:
>> We've had a lovely little chat in #fedora-extras with the
>> firefox maintainer, and he's absolutely right there needs to be a
>> toolized way for each maintainer with a package who builds against
>> firefox to set a sort of watch in the build or update system against
>> firefox looking for new builds.

Well, maybe that could work. But I think for the merged Core and Extras
world the maintainer of a update for now should be responsible of poking
the downstream packagers and/or even rebuild the packages and push them
at the same time.

Sure, a technical solution would be best, but I want a solution now
until we have a technical one in place.

I'd suggest: For a stable distro (like FC6 in this case) we normally
should not update stuff that breaks other stuff in the repo in any case.
If we have to (firefox) then it's up to the maintainer of that package
and his co-maintainers to make sure the updates works smoothly for most
of the users. That means: make sure other stuff in the repos (galeon,
liferia,...) depending on that package still works. That would normal
mean: just rebuild it and poke the signers afterwards to push the
rebuild stuff. That should be able to script and should not take more
then 5 minutes of work in total.

Sure, that would mean a bit more work for the firefox maintainer in this
case (sorry callion, but that's due to firefox fault as it does not
provide a stable ABI/API), but it's the best for all afaics as firefox
updates are often security relevant and that's the quickest and
smoothest way to get it out for everyone. And btw, sure, if a downstream
package (galeon, liferia,...) breaks with the new firefox, then their
maintainers should fix it and it should not delay the push of the new
firefox.

That will get a bit easier in the merged Core and Extras world. For now
(FC5 and FC6) I'd say: Maintain a list somewhere in the wiki with the
names of packages that need a rebuild when a new firefox is published.
If a new firefox was pushed by Core let someone (callion, me, f13, the
signers, FESCo members, ...) increase EVR on these packages and queue a
rebuild.

How does that sound?

> Actually, I think such a tool would be useful also for others: for
> example, in order to know when a new kernel is released and I need to
> rebuild the kmod I am maintaining I can:

The plan for kmods always was to let the buildsys handle that
automatically. Just no one got around to implement it. Any volunteers?

CU
thl




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