Proposal: Better force-tag

[Toshio Kuratomi]

Kevin Fenzi wrote:
> I think this entire thing has been a lot of mis-communication. 
> 
> First of all I didn't think this was that big a deal. 
> I have used 'make force-tag' and/or 'TAG_OPTS=-F make tag' a few times,
> but it was very few and far between. I guess possibly because I don't
> have packages that have tons of changes always happening. 
> (yes, I also mockbuild locally my packages before checking in changes
> too, which I realize is not practical for everyone). 
> 
> It seems that forcing tags is heavily in the main path of some
> developers. ;( I disagree that some of those reasons are needed, but it
> sure seems to upset some people, and there is no reason to force a
> change before we have some work around. 
> 
> Given this I would like to see this revisited this week, and reverse
> the changes until we can get some fix in place (I like ajax's patch
> using Entities, but thats up to the buildsys/koji folks). 
> 
Reversing the decision may be the right thing to do.  To avoid seesawing
decisions as one side and then another argues their case, I'd love to
hear a few words from the koji devs, though:

1) In what situations can things be broken with force-tags?  (ie: is it
just when force tagging a successfully completed build?  Are completed
failed builds okay?  What happens if a retag occurs on an in-progress
build?)

2) What breakage occurs?  (ie: the current discussion seems to be that
only recreating an SRPM for GPL compliance is broken.  What about
requeue and other koji functions?)

3) Is there a plan for fixing things so developers don't need to do
retags?  Timeframe?  Is it acceptable to leave these commands in until then?

I feel like FESCo is in the unenviable position of mediating between
tool developers who say the tool doesn't operate the way people are
using it but haven't given enough details of what the problem is and
package maintainers who want to do something potentially problematic
because of other deficiencies in the tool.  More communication between
the two endpoints is desirable here.

-Toshio

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 197 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/attachments/20080915/8d796b87/attachment.sig>