On 06/15/2016 01:24 AM, Tomasz Torcz wrote:

Well, if a packager wants to maintain it, why not?
> 
> As someone who's a bit skeptical about containers as the future of software
> distribution, I'd like to continue getting "traditionally packaged"
> applications from Fedora where possible. I became a Fedora packager as a
> large part because I wanted to expand the pool of such software that was
> available in Fedora, by making it available to other users. It seems like
> that's not a thing we're going to care about as much going forward, which I
> guess is... fine, but I kind of have mixed feelings about the whole thing.
> 
> I suspect I am in a minority here, though.

  I hope you aren't, I share your sentiments exactly.

Count me among the sceptics. As Florian pointed out, containers are convenient, but opaque: they bypass the technical process that is the basis for Fedora's excellence. As such, they are a form of technical debt: fine to a degree, but not a primary way to run your household.

It would be nice if there was a 'container snapshot' facility that would convert between a native application package from Fedora or Debian and a portable container---possibly both ways. Obviously, native->container is desirable for portability; the opposite conversion is less obviously useful but might be a basis for a cross-platform packaging process in the future.

In my mind, containers are primarily useful to run arbitrary untrusted third party applications, but of course they need a good enough sandbox system for that. I hope such system will emerge from the current work.