On Sat, 2013-05-25 at 08:36 +0200, David Tardon wrote:
Hi,
On Fri, May 24, 2013 at 10:08:06AM -0700, Adam Williamson wrote:
> A 'metapackage' is an actual package shipped in the repositories which
> contains no files, and whose raison d'etre is to express some
> dependencies. There are a few of these in Fedora, xorg-x11-drivers being
> the classic example, but they are generally strongly discouraged. The
> idea is that Fedora uses comps groups to express the concept 'this group
> of packages forms some kind of cohesive set and can be installed
> together', not metapackages.
Some things in favor of metapackages:
1. The packager has to know that such thing as comps exists. (I know
about it. I have even seen patches for it, so I know it is some sort of
XML. But I have no idea where to look for it. Is there a repo for it?
"fedpkg clone -B comps" was unsuccessful.) On the other side, the
First google result for 'fedora comps' is:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_use_and_edit_comps.xml_for_package_...
It has a 'how to edit comps' section which gives the repo URL.
3. A metapackage is under the packager's control. A comps group
is not.
(I doubt packagers have commit access to to comps repo (if there is a
repo).
Guess again. All packagers can commit to comps, I believe. But please,
please, try to avoid committing to it during release freezes without
checking in with notting/qa/releng, especially if your change adds
packages to release media. Or is completely broken, as has happened. ;)
That means creating a patch, opening a bug, waiting for reaction
(probably for days),... tadda yadda... Or I can create a subpackage and
be done in a minute.)
Or you could not make assumptions :)
--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora
http://www.happyassassin.net