Core + Exrtas 2

[Jeffrey C. Ollie]

On Mon, 2006-11-20 at 09:13 -0500, Jesse Keating wrote:
> On Monday 20 November 2006 08:41, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> > Are you talking about having a general policy on updates or having a
> > release freeze like FC instead of rolling updates like FE?
> 
> No, he's asking about introducing new packages to a released product.  Say 
> Fedora 7 goes out the door with a given package set.  Three weeks later a 
> great new package gets added to the Fedora universe, what kind of policy 
> would there be in making this package available to the Fedora 7 users?
> 
> Its an interesting question, one that I'd like to hear opinions on.  
> Historically we haven't made new packages available in core unless they were 
> needed by something else already in.  However having Extras around helped in 
> that new packages could get introduced there.  Just adding the package in 
> sounds OK on the surface, but one needs to consider some of the guidelines 
> we're putting up as far as what can be spun and called Fedora.  If a bunch of 
> new packages show up after Fedora 7 is cut, would somebody be able to make 
> use of those packages when spinning their cut of Fedora 7?  I think it's 
> pretty safe to say that a lot of these packages wouldn't have a chance to go 
> through any kind of QA / Testing that Will is trying to put in place.

Here's a proposal to consider:

"Official" packages for Fedora release X would consist of those packages
that exist in the development repository at the time that release X is
branched, plus official packages that are updated to fix security issues
or bugs.  Maintainers would be discouraged from performing non- security
or bugfix related updates to official packages, especially if the update
would require updates to other packages.

New packages (i.e. packages that were not in the development repository
when the release was branched) would be added officially to a Fedora X
release only if they were required to fix a security issue or bug with a
package already in the official release.  Approval from whatever board
is in charge of Fedora would be required to give a new package official
status in a released version of Fedora.

However, builds for new packages could be requested for non-development
branches.  The binary packages would go into the same yum repos as
official packages but would have "unofficial" status.  No official
package could have a build- or run-time dependency on an unofficial
package, no conflicts between official and unofficial packages, etc.
etc.  Also, no Fedora branded {server,desktop,yadda yadda} CD/DVD
release could include unofficial packages (you could make a release, you
just couldn't call it Fedora).

Use of the package database would be required to track the status of
packages, and hopefully scripts could be developed that would prevent
(or at least detect) violations of policy.

Allowing "unofficial" packages in the yum repos is so that people could
access new packages easily (as long as they have Internet access).
Requiring people to run development (or downloading the SRPM and
rebuilding it) just to access new packages just seems too cruel.  I'm
sure that there are a lot of people out there like me that want to try
out that new game or word processor or whatever but need a stable enough
system that they can rely on it being in a working state.

Jeff
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