broken dependencies caused by GNOME bouncing between 3 and 2.x without any advance notice

[Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski]

Dear GNOME maintainers,
I would appreciate it if you announced changes that cause broken
dependencies.

Last month, without any warning, I started getting nagmails about broken
dependencies in one of my packages (gnomeradio) in rawhide and F-14.
The missing dependency was

libgnome-media-profiles.so.0

Soon after I finally got round to rebuilding the package (and porting it
to current GTK2 in rawhide, by the way), I got another nagmail telling
me the package has a broken dependency again. This time it's

libgnome-media-profiles-3.0.so.0

Again, there was no announcement. I am a little upset about it and I'm
asking for some HEADS-UP e-mails either to devel(-announce) or to the
maintainers of the affected packages next time. You probably didn't mean
it that way, but I find your relying (intentional or not) on the automated
dependency checks to inform the maintainers that you've just broken their
packages a little rude. I'm sure you have (and had) your hands full taking
care of the transition forth and back, but seeing that you did have the
time to mention gnomeradio on the GNOME3 Feature wiki page, I find it
odd that you didn't find the time to send a short e-mail announcing
the ABI breakage.

Best regards,
Dominik

-- 
Fedora http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Rathann
RPMFusion http://rpmfusion.org | MPlayer http://mplayerhq.hu
"Faith manages."
        -- Delenn to Lennier in Babylon 5:"Confessions and Lamentations"

[Matthias Clasen]

On Thu, 2010-08-19 at 16:24 +0200, Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski wrote:
>  Dear GNOME maintainers,
>  I would appreciate it if you announced changes that cause broken
>  dependencies. 
Ah, so you admit to not reading FESCo summaries :-).
On a more serious note: I'm sorry for the inconvenience.

This delay has hit us at a particularly bad time, right after the branch
and during alpha freeze, so it took longer than it should have to clean
things up. Sending out announcements for individual soname bumps was a
bit unfeasible due to the amount of change, and due to the fact that
this happening after the branch means that things are staged and delayed
by bodhi, so they hit the buildroot at somewhat unpredictable times.

Again, I'm sorry. Maybe it makes you feel better to know that I am
feeling the same pain as you, but not for an individual package, but for
all of GNOME...


Matthias

[Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski]

Hi Matthias,

On Thursday, 19 August 2010 at 16:39, Matthias Clasen wrote:
>  On Thu, 2010-08-19 at 16:24 +0200, Dominik 'Rathann'
> Mierzejewski wrote:
>  > Dear GNOME maintainers,
>  > I would appreciate it if you announced changes that cause broken
>  > dependencies.
>  
>  Ah, so you admit to not reading FESCo summaries :-). 
Yes. There's too much traffic on devel@. I did check devel-announce again
in case I missed anything before sending this e-mail. Besides, FESCo
meeting summary only states that the feature was accepted. Or were you
expecting me to read the entire meeting log? ;)

There was literally nothing about the fall-out of this transition
on devel@ at all. At least I couldn't find anything relevant searching
for "gnome" and "gtk".

[...]
>  Again, I'm sorry. Maybe it makes you feel better to know that I
> am
>  feeling the same pain as you, but not for an individual package, but for
>  all of GNOME... 
I understand. I don't mind the extra work due to the breakage, just the
fact that it wasn't clearly announced for such a big change. Some good
came out of it, too, so let's just strive to do better next time.

Best regards,
Dominik

-- 
Fedora http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Rathann
RPMFusion http://rpmfusion.org | MPlayer http://mplayerhq.hu
"Faith manages."
        -- Delenn to Lennier in Babylon 5:"Confessions and Lamentations"

[Bastien Nocera]

On Thu, 2010-08-19 at 17:18 +0200, Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski wrote:
>  Hi Matthias,
>  
>  On Thursday, 19 August 2010 at 16:39, Matthias Clasen wrote:
>  > On Thu, 2010-08-19 at 16:24 +0200, Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski wrote:
>  > > Dear GNOME maintainers,
>  > > I would appreciate it if you announced changes that cause broken
>  > > dependencies.
>  > 
>  > Ah, so you admit to not reading FESCo summaries :-).
>  
>  Yes. There's too much traffic on devel@. I did check devel-announce again
>  in case I missed anything before sending this e-mail. Besides, FESCo
>  meeting summary only states that the feature was accepted. Or were you
>  expecting me to read the entire meeting log? ;)
>  
>  There was literally nothing about the fall-out of this transition
>  on devel@ at all. At least I couldn't find anything relevant searching
>  for "gnome" and "gtk".
>  
>  [...]
>  > Again, I'm sorry. Maybe it makes you feel better to know that I am
>  > feeling the same pain as you, but not for an individual package, but for
>  > all of GNOME...
>  
>  I understand. I don't mind the extra work due to the breakage, just the
>  fact that it wasn't clearly announced for such a big change. Some good
>  came out of it, too, so let's just strive to do better next time. 
The fedora-desktop list is usually where we discuss this, and we
"announced" this in the "GTK+3 advisiblity for F14?" thread, after
the
upstream announcements were made (which I guess were pretty well
publicised).

If in any doubts, hop on #fedora-desktop on GIMPNet, and I'm sure
there'll be people to infirm or confirm your suspicions in the future.

Cheers

[Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski]

On Thursday, 19 August 2010 at 18:26, Bastien Nocera wrote:
>  On Thu, 2010-08-19 at 17:18 +0200, Dominik 'Rathann'
> Mierzejewski wrote:
>  > On Thursday, 19 August 2010 at 16:39, Matthias Clasen wrote: 
[...]
>  > > Again, I'm sorry. Maybe it makes you feel better to
> know that I am
>  > > feeling the same pain as you, but not for an individual package, but for
>  > > all of GNOME...
>  > 
>  > I understand. I don't mind the extra work due to the breakage, just the
>  > fact that it wasn't clearly announced for such a big change. Some good
>  > came out of it, too, so let's just strive to do better next time.
>  
>  The fedora-desktop list is usually where we discuss this, and we
>  "announced" this in the "GTK+3 advisiblity for F14?" thread, after
> the
>  upstream announcements were made (which I guess were pretty well
>  publicised). 
That's great, but I'm maintaining just one little application that
is affected. IMO ABI changes (even those affecting a handful of packages)
should be announced in devel@ and not require subscribing to additional
mailing-lists. I see plenty of people announcing ABI breakage (boost,
for a recent example). Why can't you?

>  If in any doubts, hop on #fedora-desktop on GIMPNet, and I'm
> sure
>  there'll be people to infirm or confirm your suspicions in the future. 
It's not on FreeNode and I can't find any information about SSL/TLS support
on irc.gnome.org. I can't connect using unencrypted connection.

Regards,
Dominik

-- 
Fedora http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Rathann
RPMFusion http://rpmfusion.org | MPlayer http://mplayerhq.hu
"Faith manages."
        -- Delenn to Lennier in Babylon 5:"Confessions and Lamentations"