On 1/25/14, Adam Williamson <awilliam(a)redhat.com> wrote:
On Sat, 2014-01-25 at 12:04 +0100, Alec Leamas wrote:
> After hacking a simple tool which provides a GUI for a repository file
> it's possible to create repository packages complete with desktop and
> appdata file. I have some 5-10 such repository packages under way, my
> plan is to push them into rpmfusion.
http://rpmfusion.org/Contributors#Read_the_packaging_guidelines
I know this is controversial. I've also heard some rumours about
Fedora using something they call "Packaging Guidelines". Has anyone
some information on this topic? ;)
Can we just for the sake of discussion leave this formal side of it, for now?
So I found this point interesting in thinking about these issues
this
morning. There was a post of Hughesie's (I think) in another thread
which was also illuminating: it suggested the design of Software is to
be a generic 'software' installer - to provide as much 'software' from
as many sources as possible, under the 'it's all just software' theory,
I guess.
I think the assumption that this is obviously the right design is
interesting, because I strongly disagree - not just for legal or policy
reasons, but because that's most definitely *not* what I want. I don't
want a 'greedy' software installer that just finds every piece of crap
on the internet and offers it to me. I appreciate the curation that
I don't know if this is Hughesie's vision. Anyway, it's certainly not
mine. Adding whatever software available out there to the repos is a
Bad Idea. Agreed
That said,, IMHO we actually need to be better on delivering what
people need. Some of this is not in Fedora's repos. This is already
acknowledged here and there. E. g., rpmfusion has list of
repositories which are known to work with rpmfusion [1]. For fedora,
we have e. g. jpackage, which is stated s compatible in the Java GL.
I'm trying to find some middle ground here. Instead of just enabling
repos, perhaps when installing something else, I'm trying a process
where each and every repository added is packaged separately. Hence,
here is also separate review for each repository. And even if
installed, it's not enabled until l explicitly configured by user..
I see all the problems when using things like pip, gem etc. However,
this is not anything like this. It's about letting users install
carefully selected repositories which are known to work with Fedora.
Doing it this way, we also create a difference to other repositories
which are not endorsed. Also this is something we need badly IMHO.
It's also task which naturally belongs to rpmfusion, mostly the
non-free section.
--alec.
[1]
http://rpmfusion.org/FedoraThirdPartyRepos