Guidelines for creating subpackages?

[Tom "spot" Callaway]

On Sat, 2007-12-01 at 07:49 -0800, Christopher Stone wrote:
> On Dec 1, 2007 4:33 AM, Leszek Matok <Lam at lam.pl> wrote:
> > Dnia 2007-12-01, o godz. 13:11:41 Patrice Dumas <pertusus at free.fr> napisał(a):
> >
> > > A standard policy is not desirable in my opinion. More subpackages
> > > may allow for better granularity, but the user has to install
> > > and sometime know about more packages. There is also added
> > > packaging complexity. So definitely the packager choice.
> > There's also more metadata, so even slower yum (not that you can actually
> > notice at this point), some people might even think it's a bad idea at the
> > repository/distribution level.
> >
> > On the other hand, subpackages are the only way to escape the
> > infamous "dependency hell" that's still scaring some people away from Fedora.
> 
> This is an *extremely* important topic.
> 
> Let's face it, if Fedora wants to have any hope of becoming a base
> distribution for all other distributions, then all optional requires
> will need to be split into sub-packages.

To be fair, some software works on a model like this, and some does not.
Trying to force software which is not designed in such a fashion into a
sub-packaged hierarchy is a good way to get a headache.

Not that I disagree, simply that it isn't really possible to put up hard
and fast guidelines that say "thou shalt subpackage everything to ensure
minimal dependencies".

For example, a motivated SIG could go through and suggest subpackage
improvements, where relevant, without needing to have explicit
guidelines forcing it.

~spot