What would it take to make Software Collections work in Fedora?

[Jan Zelený]

On 5. 12. 2012 at 11:17:56, Matthew Miller wrote:
> There is a perpetual problem facing all Linux distributions around how fast
> to move with software updates. In Fedora, of course, our default speed is
> petal-to-the-metal. This is part of who we are and why we are awesome.
> However, it also sometimes makes life difficult for us -- for example, our
> Puppet packages are broken because Ruby is too new. It also makes life
> difficult for people trying to use Fedora seriously. It's especially hard
> with Ruby and Java -- not that there's anything _wrong_ with these
> languages, but the packaging expectations are different and often in
> conflict with the system operator's traditional packaging worldview.
> 
> So, some Red Hat folks have developed an idea called Software Collections
> http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora_Contributor_Documentation/1/html/
> Software_Collections_Guide/index.html which is aimed at this problem -- it
> lets you install and choose between different versions of RPM-packaged
> software in parallel at run-time.
> 
> The base tool for enabling this (scl-utils) is included in Fedora, but we
> don't allow Software Collections actually as Fedora packages (see
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SoftwareCollections). This is for very good
> reasons -- there are a number of huge unanswered questions around structure,
> infrastructure, maintenance, and security updates.
> 
> I think, though, that this tool, integrated well and supported, could really
> help us in Fedora (and in EPEL). So, I'd like to
> 
> a) enumerate the problems with Software Collections in Fedora,
> 
> b) develop a medium-term plan for solving those problems, and
> 
> c) develop a longer-term plan for taking full advantage of the functionality
> where appropriate.

Hi,
I guess the main reason why SCL is not used in Fedora it requires a certain 
(potentially non-trivial) amount of work from package maintainer.

However feel free to make your packages SCL enabled. You shouldn't have any 
issues with that. Just make necessary modification in your spec files, build all 
packages against the Fedora in which you want them and host them in your repo.

The only inconvenience here is that Fedora infrastructure isn't yet prepared 
for simple support of private repositories in a style of Launchpad so you have 
to do all this work manually.

If you have any questions, I'll be more than happy to answer them if I can.
-- 
Thank you
Jan Zeleny

Red Hat Software Engineer
Brno, Czech Republic
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