major change release management for former Extras packages?

Alex Lancaster alexl at users.sourceforge.net
Mon May 7 13:12:46 UTC 2007


>>>>> "JB" == Josh Boyer  writes:

[...]

>> I can't find any FAQ on the wiki (or definitive discussions on this
>> mailing list) where policy has been established and about how this
>> is supposed to work (other than perhaps mentioning it in
>> discussions in FESCo meetings).  This is something needs to be
>> front and centre right now before F7 goes live.

JB> We've been pointing people to this page:

JB> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ReleaseEngineering/DevelFreezePolicy

JB> for a while now...

JB> Then there's this:

JB> https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-maintainers/2007-May/msg00068.html

JB> Which also says you need to email rel-eng to get stuff into the
JB> f7-final tag.  Likely the reason Extras stuff isn't highlighted is
JB> because there is no Extras in the merged world.  All packages
JB> follow the same process.

I'm sorry, I don't think it's nearly obvious enough for most non-RH
packagers (as the questions in this thread make clear).  For example
there is no link to that page on

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers/NewPackageProcess

There should be a message on this list (and maybe fedora-devel-list)
spelling out (or linking to a wiki package) exactly what the new
procedures are and what they mean for all (former Extras) packagers.

I have been monitoring fedora-maintainers as required in the
sponsorship/signup for all contributors/packagers and I have yet to
see an e-mail with title of something like "Attention all former
Extras packages: here is the new release process"

So many things are currently not specified, e.g.:

1) What exactly are "tags", "tasks" and "builds" in the new koji build
   system?  How do they relate to each other?  What does it mean for
   tags to "inherit" from each other (I sort of figured out some of
   this stuff by hunting around on the koji site, but that shouldn't
   be necessary).

2) Who decides and/or approves rel-eng requests?  How long will they
   take to process?  What criteria do they use?

Much of this is probably obvious to those inside or closely associated
with Red Hat and who are constantly on IRC or following threads in
fedora-devel-list, fedora-packaging (in addition to
fedora-maintainers) because your used to the rel-eng system because
it's been used with Core.

To the outside packager/contributor who isn't being paid to monitor
all this traffic, however, all this tacit knowledge needs to be made
*much* more explicit because it's a world of difference to how Extras
has worked up until now and I'm sure I'm not the only one who is
somewhat confused by the new processes.

Alex




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