Re: F35 Change: Third-party Software Mechanism (System-Wide Change proposal)
On Sat, Jul 3, 2021 at 4:39 PM Mark Otaris <mark(a)net-c.com> wrote:
I don’t agree with this change, as it seems obvious that many users who do not want
proprietary software installed do not want repositories with proprietary software in them
installed either (whether or not these repositories are enabled) and would want to have to
opt-in to that too. Additionally, disabled repositories show up from time to time, bugs
allowing, so they are not as inactive as the name implies. Not having them installed
serves as a safeguard.
Hi Mark, thanks for the feedback!
While there can be bugs of any type, I don't see any reason to
*expect* a bug that would make dnf or PackageKit show search results
or listings from disabled repositories.Wouldn't that be noticed and
fixed quickly?
Is the number of users who don't even want a text file mentioning the
existence of third-party software on their system significant? If
FESCO feels that people wanting to remove the package entirely is a
concern, we could soften the proposed fedora-release-workstation
Requires: on fedora-workstation-repositories to a Recommends, to allow
removing the package. I'd personally prefer to leave the Requires to
prevent silent breakage.
Also, users who use some software from the third-party repositories
likely *do not* want all of them enabled
It will be possible to opt-out and then enable individual
repositories, or opt-in and disable individual repositories. What it
doesn't provide is protection against a repository accidentally or
intentionally offering an upgrade to a system package. I think this
was one of the things that the disabled=1, disabled_metadata=0 system
was meant to make better, but the dnf mainainers have explicitly
expressed disinterested in implementing this in the past. As a
PackageKit-only thing, we're providing users a fragmented and strange
user experience. And there's even plans to eventually retire and
remove PackageKit in favor of using dnf everywhere.
Perhaps a more productive approach to this issue would be to allow a
repository to be marked "LeafOnly" - meaning the packages it contains
should not be used to satisfy dependencies of other repositories, and
should not be considered for upgrades of packages installed from other
repositories. Not considering how hard that would be to actually
implement via libsolv and what corner cases would be a problem:-)
The stated benefit of the proposed change (“the removal of the state
where the user has opted in to third party repositories but they are not actually
enabled”) is not the benefit; the actual benefit that is wanted is an improvement to the
user experience that is made easier to provide by installing the repos by default.
Well, true - if it didn't affect either the cli or gui user
experience, this state wouldn't be a problem! :-)
Thanks!
Owen