Severn Beta2

[Noah Silva [Mailing list]]

On 18 Aug 2003, Jef Spaleta wrote:

> Noah wrote:
>
> This problem is going to get far worse....before it gets better.
> Think of Ximian as just another 3rd party repo like freshrpms or fedora

This is true, except that far more people use the Ximian.  (I use
FreshRPMs on some servers myself, as it makes it easy to add certain
applications like PINE, and less of a pain than RHN to upgrade packages
since you don't have to sign up for anything...  mainly though, I use
APT-RPM to install redhat packages, not 3rd party ones.)

> and you'll see what I mean. The long term solution is not a matter of
> how red hat and ximian communicate...but how ALL the packagers
> targetting rhl communicate. Setting down usable guidelines and policies
> as to how repos for add-ons and enhancements to the "base" rhl distros
> are constructed needs to be worked out so they they ALL interact as
> seamlessly as possible...especially when upgrading the base distro. XD2

This is true, I hadn't considered this before, but this may be why debian
seems to have less problems.  There is a clearly defined policy.  I think
this is important for the other distros in the long run too, but I thought
a large part of that was taken on by LSB?

> Maybe there is a need for specific packaging guidelines that 3rd party
> packages must meet so upgrading will work smoothly, not that i have any
> clue as to what that should be. If this is going to move towards the
> community project ideal..the community is going to have to set a
> standard and hold 3rd party repo/package builders to that
> standards..ximian included.

but I would think, for example:
RHL9 ships gnome-thinger-0.6.1
RHL9 Eratta ships gnome-thinger-0.6.2
XD2 ships gnome-thinger-0.7.9
RHL Severn ships gnome-thinger 0.8.2

it should be obvious that the ximian package is older and should be
replaced (or if it is newer.. than it should be left...).  Maybe this is a
simplistic example though...

 -- noah silva