[Fedora-olpc-list] Package branching policies and conventions

[Robin Norwood]

On Sat, 26 Jul 2008 22:33:32 +0530
"Sayamindu Dasgupta" <sayamindu at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello,
> Can anyone guide me to some pointers on the general policy wrt package
> branching when it comes to OLPC specific branches (eg: OLPC-2, OLPC-3)
> ?
> I have a (pretty high priority) bug at
> http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/7474, and fixing it requires patching
> quite a few X related packages most of which are directly pulled in
> from F-9. Do you think it is a good idea to create separate OLPC-3
> branches for these packages, or do you think I should submit my
> patches to the maintainers, and wait for them to update their F-9
> packages ?

You'll have to talk to the Fedora maintainers to find out if, and how
quickly they might be willing to accept your patches.  Do the patches
fix general bugs, or are the OLPC specific?  Are the patches likely to
be accepted by the upstream projects?  Are the patches relatively
'safe' (like small, well-understood bug fixes)?  If the answer to all
three is 'yes', then there might be a good chance of getting the
patches in F-9.  If not, you might have to go ahead and fork the
packages, but I'd recommend working with the maintainer and upstream to
get your patches accepted so you don't have to keep the packages forked
indefinitely.

-RN

-- 
Robin Norwood
Red Hat, Inc.

"The Sage does nothing, yet nothing remains undone."
-Lao Tzu, Te Tao Ching