Extras updates for FC3 and older? (was: Re: Mono package policy)

[Thorsten Leemhuis]

Am Mittwoch, den 18.01.2006, 09:07 +0100 schrieb Michael Schwendt:
> On Tue, 17 Jan 2006 20:05:08 -0500, Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams wrote:
> > On Tue, 2006-01-17 at 23:26 +0100, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> > > On Thu, 12 Jan 2006 09:44:49 -0500, Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams wrote:
> > > > On Thu, 2006-01-12 at 17:22 +0330, Roozbeh Pournader wrote:
> > > > > On Tue, 2006-01-10 at 12:11 -0600, Tom 'spot' Callaway wrote:
> > > > > > - that mono will not be considered for inclusion in Extras for FC-3/FC-4
> > > > > > until FC-5 goes GOLD.
> > > > > FC3 will be unsupported when FC5 test2 comes out. Should we still allow
> > > > > new FC3 packages in extras after that?!
> > > > It's at the maintainer's discretion. Note that FE currently has some
> > > > packages with branches going all the way back to RHL9.
> > > No. Fedora Extras is only for FC3 and above. The older branches are
> > > fedora.us stuff.
> > Nonetheless there is sufficient metadata in CVS for them. The
> > buildsystem is another issue though.
> 
> It's not that easy. Even if a few packagers still wanted to support RHL9
> (as an example) with Extras updates (or updates for old packages from
> fedora.us, or even with new Extras), for the community project there must
> be the decision _whether to support such an old release officially or
> not_. It's a bit like "all or nothing". It would be bad to offer a
> repository full of stuff which is out-of-date, insecure, untested, hardly
> used anymore, and so on, just because a few bits are kept up-to-date. If a
> few packagers continued with updates beyond an announced end-of-life, that
> even might confuse users out there, who see the dates of the packages and
> might believe the repository is still alive. End-of-life of a release of
> Extras ought to mean: everyone, stop shipping updates and move on. That
> ought to be policy.

I agree mostly. Big updates shouldn't happen to Fedora Extras 3 anymore
after EOL of Fedora Core 3. *Maybe* we should widen the timeframe a
small bit and set the release of Fedora Core n+2 (this would be FC5 in
this case). Maye even two or four additional weeks after that -- but not
more.

But security updates should still be handled by the Extras Maintainers
for such a "mostly-end-of-life" Fedora Extras 3. Even if that means that
a big version update is needed (but only if there is no other way to
avoid that).

And no, we can't simply drop this burden to Fedora Legacy. ;-)

Just my 2 cent.

CU
thl