FESCo wants to ban direct stable pushes in Bodhi (urgent call for feedback)

[Ville Skyttä]

On Saturday 27 February 2010, Kevin Kofler wrote:

> If they Obsolete something else, then they're not really new packages.

I that's the blanket generalization I read it as, I don't agree with it, but 
meh.

> Well, true, new packages which Provide some common virtual Provides like
> bluez-dbus-pin-helper also need the same scrutiny as upgrades to explicit
> packages. That's not the common case though, [...]

Common or not, it is one occurrence of what I wanted to point out as you have 
more than once in this thread made a broad claim that new packages just 
can't/won't break existing setups, and still make in a slightly less broad 
form below.

> New packages which don't Obsolete existing packages or Provide existing
> provided names cannot cause any of the above.

Those "provided names" also include the package's Name, and all files shipped 
in the package, or more generally, anything that other packages or mechanisms 
(e.g. package groups) can have a dependency on so that it gets pulled in 
without explicitly asked.  Whether the "provided name" is existing or not is 
irrelevant, a dependency on it can spring to life any time, including at a 
time when it causes the package containing the name to be installed without 
being explicitly asked.

And FWIW, if you think outside of the Fedora box, that set is (perhaps not 
strictly, but practically) infinite, and I suppose there is no active ongoing 
effort/process to check all of these even within Fedora.

Anyway in my opinion it is not really relevant to this discussion whether new 
packages may end up being installed without explicitly being asked for.  I 
think it's better to just treat and push them like other updates, be it 
through testing or directly to stable.