Summary of the 2008-10-21 Packaging Committee meeting

[Jason L Tibbitts III]

>>>>> "PD" == Patrice Dumas <pertusus at free.fr> writes:

PD> Tired to tell everytime the same, I have put an argumentation
PD> here:
PD> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers/Packaging_Tricks#Use_of_common_namespace

Well, I don't recall seeing a draft guideline anywhere; if you want to
submit one, be my guest.  I believe this needs to be in the actual
guidelines.

PD> I think that it would be better to tackle this issue cross
PD> distribution, that is when we see a real conflict or a generic
PD> name used, talk to the distribution list to agree on a name.

My intent was that packagers would consult FPC in the case of
questions, and that FPC could take appropriate action, including
checking what other distros do and attempting to coordinate when
possible.

PD> A last word, I think that it is sad that we have to do a guideline
PD> here, since upstream and packagers should understand the issue,
PD> and we already have too many guidelines, but I also don't know how
PD> to solve it differently, I am tired of looking at every submission
PD> and whine if it smells like a generic name is used.

These things are not always obvious to packagers, which is why we have
guidelines and reviewers.  The intent is to make the guideline as
short as possible (because the alternative is to make it impossibly
huge), but I don't think we can continue without some kind of
guideline here.

And as for getting tired of this issue, I guess the only thing I can
offer is sympathy and advise that you get used to it.  Many upstreams
simply will not care, because to them people who use other similarly-
or identically-named programs simply won't compile theirs.  We,
however, have to consider the uniqueness of filenames across the
entire distribution, not just sets of installed packages.

 - J<