Packaging/Review Guidelines change

Peter Jones pjones at redhat.com
Mon Jan 9 16:14:24 UTC 2006


On Mon, 2006-01-09 at 16:51 +0100, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
> On Lun 9 janvier 2006 16:16, Peter Jones wrote:
> > On Mon, 2006-01-09 at 10:54 +0100, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
> >> On Lun 9 janvier 2006 05:51, Peter Jones wrote:
> >> > On Sun, 2006-01-08 at 19:21 +0100, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
> >> >
> >> >> Well, if Fedora is serious about this rule, should not Fedora's rpm
> >> be
> >> >> patched to emit a warning when operating on a dir owned by something
> >> >> else ?
> >> >
> >> > rpm knows about packages, not repos.
> >>
> >> rpm knows about its db state when performing
> >> installations/uninstallations.
> >>
> >> I meant a warning at rpm -U/-i or -e time not at rpmbuild time
> >
> > Then you're notifying the wrong people that something is wrong.
> 
> Do you really believe it's not the user problem if its system is about to
> switch to a state where we know problem may happen ?

I really don't think this ever hurts a user, it's just a matter of
tidiness.  But more to the point, we can't restrict this sort of thing
in other repos a user may be using, and we'll never be able to.  I don't
like spending effort on something we really can't address in any
meaningful way.

It's a policy for the repo, about the repo, regarding how packages that
are part of the repo should behave.  It is only a problem in the context
of the repo.  The checking belongs in the relationship between a package
and the repo.  Nowhere else.

> >  If
> > you're going to automagically probe for this and raise some
> > error/warning/notification, it needs to happen when the package is added
> > to a repo.
> 
> Sure
> 
> > Before then it's incorrect,
> 
> Why ?

Because a single package can't conflict with itself in this way?  The
entire notion of the problem only exists within the context of a repo.
You can't tell that a package is violating the rule unless you know
where the package is going.  Furthermore, the installed set of packages
may not be a reliable source for what is and isn't going to be in the
repo -- think about Obsoletes: .

> > and after then it doesn't help to know it's busted.
> 
> Of course it helps, do you really believe we catch every problem at the
> packaging stage ?

I really think we can throw an error when you try to add something
broken to the repository.

>  You could as well advocate removal of every single
> warning/error in live systems, since problems should be fixed before
> software is shipped (in an ideal lalala world)

This would be a warning message that's only useful to developers.  As
such, we should not be displaying it during installation, as it only
serves to confuse most users.

-- 
  Peter




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