What Fedora makes sucking for me - or why I am NOT Fedora

[Michael Schwendt]

On Thu, 11 Dec 2008 21:06:57 -0800, Jesse wrote:

> On Fri, 2008-12-12 at 03:59 +0100, Kevin Kofler wrote:
> > Maintainers pushing updates of the "Remove dot at end of Summary" type (and
> > I'm not even sure I'm exaggerating there, this may well have already
> > happened at some point!) really don't "get" it...

It has happened indeed. Can't give a specific example, but it has been
"spec fixes" with no different results in the built files (except maybe
%summary, %description). Such updates would be harmless though.
Superfluous, but harmless. I'm aware of multiple mass-updates which
only fixed unowned directories recently. ;)

> it's these types of updates, and the gratuitous "latest upstream
> everywhere"

It can't be generalized, however. Minor version upgrades can be harmless
or even beneficial. And the same applies to some major releases.

There is no movement that aims at disallowing packagers to release such
updates.

What should really stop is the mass-updates of fresh packages prepared in
devel, which are only copied to, built for, and released in older branches
without any testing. Major spec file changes (full rewrites even), which
rename/remove lots of sub-packages without adding proper Obsoletes, on top
of major version upgrades, which even invalidate any personal
notes/documentation a user may have built up, or which requires rebuilds
and/or upgrades of dependencies (sometimes even new build requirements)
to move forward.

> (I recently got a request for something in F8 that would
> cause multiple other packages to have to be rebuilt.  F8 is weeks away
> from end of life!!!) updates that I would like to see some re-training
> over.  First step is having proper policy/guideline about what is
> "common sense" when pushing updates.  Next step is identifying the
> people breaking these and having some re-training with them and their
> sponsor. 

That sounds worthwhile.