Summary - Broken dependencies in Fedora Extras - 2006-11-24

[Thorsten Leemhuis]

Michael Schwendt schrieb:
> On Sat, 25 Nov 2006 16:47:48 +0100, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
>>> Well, I think you misunderstood what Alain tried to point out. There are
>>> packages in FE which are broken for a very long time. Meanwhile, FC3 and
>>> FC4 have been transferred to Fedora Legacy, and since not even FESCO cares
>>> about this, they remain broken.
>> BTW, FESCo has to set priorities, too. The above problem (and all those
>> packagers which have broken deps for quite some time) really annoys me a
>> lot
> Some packages are broken for two months or more. Some even belong to
> FESCO members.
> 
> One thing for sure, I have not created the repoclosure report scripts to
> become the grunt who enters all that breakage into bugzilla, just because
> some FE packagers prefer to ignore the broken deps report and/or the
> bi-weekly emails they receive.
>
> One option that is left: running a different script on the repoclosure
> reports and opening bugzilla tickets automatically.

Well, they ignore the mails so I'd assume most will ignore the bugzilla
reports, too. But if people disagree with that: Yeah, why not.

> I can do that, I've
> done it before, but I don't like to do that with my own bugzilla account
> too often (I have enough open tickets like #216007). 

We could use "nobody at fedoraproject.org" for that. Just ask for the
password and I'll tell you. Or setup a special e-mail address + bugzilla
account for that.

> [...]
>> (and they make the reports quite useless because they are so long
>> that probably nobody reads them anymore) -- but I and FESCo can't do
>> everything alone (FESCo members do their FESCo work in their spare time,
>> too) and there are IMHO things on the FESCo todo-list that are more
>> important currently.
> FESCO consists of 13 members. Not even an official statement has been
> made.

If you want a statement propose one, put it up for discussion on this
list, integrate feedback you received on the list, show it to FESCo and
we'll probably ACK it (FESCo members are encouraged to participate in
the public discussion if they don't like major parts of the proposal)

Otherwise you have to wait until somebody else (inside or outside of
FESCO) finds time to do what I described above.

> It is questionable what FESCO's point of view is with regard to the
> growing list of problems. I don't ask you, Thorsten, to fix the crap.

Well, I had planed to simply go trough the whole list and fix in CVS
what I could fix easily. But I did not find the time yet.

> I
> just wonder where the steering is? FESCO should have the courage to
> contact a FE Contributor officially and request action, stop a contributor
> from adding further packages to FE prior to fixing published builds, or
> requiring a packager to name a co-maintainer.

I agree that we probably need something like what you outlined above,
but somebody just has to work out a policy for that first (how many
broken deps are okay, ...). FESCo has a lot to do already and I simply
found no time for that yet (and I can't do anything alone). I don't know
about the other FESCo members think about this.

But you seemed to be interested in it, so it would be the best if you
could work something out and propose it for FESCo (see above).

> [...]
>> I'd really like it if someone that cares (in an
>> ideal world: the QA-Sig) and has some spare cycles just would step up
>> and fix all those stuff that easily fixable -- this policy allow that:
>> http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/Policy/WhoIsAllowedToModifyWhichPackages
> This doesn't fit too well into your scheme, as it results in some
> volunteers breaking stuff, other volunteers trying to fix the breakage.
> When the community gets 

Well, I think we need someone like a QA group to fix things for other
people now and then. But the QA Sig could also handle what you outlined
above, e.g. somehow put pressure on the contributors so they fix their
stuff on their own.

>> The above problem is not easily fixable. My vote is to simply ship a
>> update createrepo in Extras or ignore it for now as the dists are
>> probably EOL soon.
> Back when I was still in FESCO, we've removed the broken packages after a
> long time of waiting for a fix in Core. We could do that again (and
> e.g. only remove "plague" for FE3/FE4), but again as a last resort only.

Well, they are not installable in any case, so I think removing them is
okay. I think just do it. Maybe someone steps up to work out a propsoe
solution then.

> [...]

CU
thl