[Fedora-packaging] Re: No pre-built applications rule

[Axel Thimm]

On Sun, Sep 17, 2006 at 07:53:10AM +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> On Sat, 2006-09-16 at 22:08 -0700, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
> > Hey guys,
> > It's come to my attention that we don't have a "Packages must be built
> > from source, no precompiled binaries" rule in the current guidelines.  I
> > think this is an oversight as the Binary Firmware section:
> > http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Guidelines#BinaryFirmware
> > 
> > implies this for the specific case of firmware.
> > 
> > How about something like:
> > 
> > "Packages must be built from source code.  Including pre-built programs
> > or libraries is strictly forbidden.  A select few exceptions are made
> > for binary firmware.  Please see
> > http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Guidelines#BinaryFirmware
> > for details."
> > 
> > And on ReviewGuidelines:
> > "Must: The package must be built from source.  No pre-built programs or
> > libraries are acceptable."
> -1
> 
> > Thoughts, opinions welcome.
> 
> IMO, both rules above are a mistake.
> 
> In my understanding the original intend was to force "rebuildability" on
> LINUX code, i.e. all Linux code to be open-sourced.
> 
> I.e. you'd first have to define what you understand as "Linux code".
> 
> A native firmware to be applied by a running Linux kernel would
> definitely qualify as such. But a firmware (as being applied by
> emulators) or foreign libraries (as being required by cross compilers)
> are cornercases.
> 
> I find forcing to build them from source to be non-helpful, because
> 
> 1. Technically, 
> - Rebuilding such binaries can require very large toolchains underneath.
> 
> - The toolchains required to rebuild such binaries, often have a
> circular dependency on such binaries. E.g. bootstrapping
> (cross-)compilers from scratch often is not possible or at least very
> hard to achieve (Applies to Linux itself, too)
> 
> - Forcing to rebuild a binary introduces a very large risk of producing
> a non-usable binary from it, due to bugs in the toolchain required to
> rebuild it. Fixing such bugs is far from being trivial.

Doesn't all this apply to several other software projects like gcc and
openoffice, too? Why, then, do we ship source for these, too?

> 2. Where to draw the line between "such binaries" and "ordinary data"?
> 
> >From a running OS's perspective, running a "non-native firmware" on in
> am emulator is not any different from processing "data", e.g. displaying
> a postscript document in ghostscript is essentially the same as running
> a foreign firmware in an emulator.

So uploading closed source binaries to arm/scalepath/ppc hardware from
i386 should be allowed?

IMHO I think our mission as the packaging group is that need to define
*how* to package something. *Whether* something is allowed to be
packaged or not is not our decision. See also the kernel module
discussion.

This is because if we were to do so we would be touching Fedora's
goals in one or another way, possibly with a different intention than
what the original goals were. I read them as everything-open-source
which would even include firmwares. I don't neccessarily personally
agree with these goals, but that's not for me to decide, and neither
for the packaging committee, e.g. how-vs-whether.

So better bring this up with fesco or fab.
-- 
Axel.Thimm at ATrpms.net
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