Fwd: autogen is misconfigured

[Bruce Korb]

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From: fedora-extras-list-owner at redhat.com <fedora-extras-list-owner at redhat.com>
Date: Mar 5, 2007 3:31 PM
Subject: Re: autogen is misconfigured
To: bruce.korb at gmail.com


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From: "Bruce Korb" <bruce.korb at gmail.com>
To: "Discussion related to Fedora Extras" <fedora-extras-list at redhat.com>
Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 15:31:30 -0800
Subject: Re: autogen is misconfigured
On 3/5/07, Paul <paul at all-the-johnsons.co.uk> wrote:
> As the packager...

As the developer, I'm kind of caught in the cross fire.  I do not know Red Hat
packaging conventions.  Now that I know what "alternatives" are all about, it
sort-of seems reasonable, but it certainly puts a burden on the user who does
not want to fully understand all the nuances of the alternatives.  I'm not sure
I'd worry about a POSIX "columns", however.  The BSD "column" is a few
years older, so a conflict with "columns" is unlikely.  However, if POSIX were
to specify a new program named, "columns" and it were not my program, I'd
just cross that bridge when I got there.  I'd probably complain to the Austin
group first though, so there would be a long lead time before there were a
problem.

Anyway, with regard to the splitting of the thing into several
packages.  Debian did
it also.  There, however, all three packages are prominently displayed together.
One can easily understand that all three are needed.  With Red Hat,
this stuff is
hidden behind a "yum"my veil making it cumbersome (for my eyes at least) to
understand that autogen-devel really ought to be installed with autogen.  So, I
recommend adding a way to say, "you've selected package X.  It is very likely
you will find it more useful in conjunction with package Y, too."  (Yes, I filed
a bugzilla report about this, but no, I could not figure out how to
make an RFE.)

Thank you.  Regards, Bruce