Leaving? (cont'd)

[Hans de Goede]

Jesse Keating wrote:
> On Sunday 30 July 2006 20:21, Arthur Pemberton wrote:
>>> That's true, and the issue was raised previously that maybe clearer
>>> guidelines should be written about what should or should not be updated
>>> within the same Fedora release. FC-5 shouldn't "eat babies" like
>>> rawhide, yet one expects more than just security updates. So a line must
>>> be drawn somewhere. For example, if a new version of gnumeric (or
>>> inkscape, or whatever) is out, with bug fixes and new features, by all
>>> means it should be released. OTOH, if said new release is not backward
>>> compatible with older documents (unlikely of course, but this is just an
>>> example), you obviously don't want to update and potentially break
>>> someone's documents. I think this is where common sense should come in,
>>> and certainly inconvenience to the user base is one of many factors that
>>> should come into the decision...
>>>
>>> -denis
>> At the very least, such guidelines would make things clear, would
>> probably reducing levels of complaining about such.
> 
> Keep in mind that such guidelines, if ever conceived, would have to apply to 
> Extras as well, since Extras is a default repository of Fedora and Extras 
> changes can break other packages within Extras.  Trying to set a policy will 
> take the ability out of the hands of maintainers to issue updates, and 
> instead a controlling person or persons will have to evaluate each and every 
> proposed update, slowing the system way down :/
> 
> 

In extras we already have a few unwritten rules, for example don't do an
soname changing update (or other ABI breakign lib update) except for
devel. This doesn't slow things down. There is a difference between
having a comittee sanction every update, or having a few guidelines in
place, which everybody follows as they see fit, and only when in doubt
ask the list.

Regards,

Hans