RFC: Exploded source repo layouts

[Hans de Goede]

Doug Ledford wrote:
> I've been working on getting this set up and functional.

<lots of complicated hacks and workarounds deleted>

So Far I've been quiet on this, sort of hoping it would go away by itself, but 
as a contributor with quite a few packages let me say that I'm deeply worried 
about this whole distributed VCS / exploded source idea floating around.

It seems there are a few people who are a big fan of this, and about as much 
active opponents. I have no problems with adding the possibility to use a 
distributed VCS with exploded trees to the mix of ways to maintain and build 
packages, but this should not replace the current nice and simple setup we have.

First of all it does NOT match the way rpm was designed at all, rpm is about 
pristine sources with _separate_ patches, but most importantly, this is rather 
complicated making things unnecessary hard for people who don't want to do the 
stuff some of the distributed VCS proponents want to do. This worries me, I'm 
esp. worried that the barrier of entry to becoming a Fedora packager will be 
raised significantly.

Also I even fail to see the claimed advantages in using a distributed VCS at 
all, isn't our mantra upstream upstream upstream, well if this mantra is 
properly followed and upstream is undergoing active development then most of 
the time the pristine sources should be fine without any patches at all, since 
all patches are integrated upstream in a timely manner. Also if someone wants 
to do so much work on the upstrewam sources, then he/she should just become an 
upstream developer. Really getting upstream cvs/svn/whatever access isn't that 
hard, then one can directly commit one's changes in to upstreams VCS.

Regards,

Hans