Fedora Alternatives (Re: [fab] build service)

[Michael Schwendt]

On Sat, 11 Nov 2006 12:37:03 -0500, seth vidal wrote:

> On Sat, 2006-11-11 at 16:48 +0100, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> > On Sat, 11 Nov 2006 14:49:16 +0100, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> > 
> > > Thus I'm more and more
> > > wondering if we we should re-evaluate the "Fedora Alternatives" idea
> > > that got buried. Users of stable releases that want a bit more up2date
> > > stuff could get in there, while users that are a careful stick to the
> > > main distro, and users that like some risks use devel.
> > > 
> > > But we have some much on our plate currently, thus I don't think it'll
> > > be wise to discuss that now.
> > 
> > So?
> > 
> > Rest assured, it would be wise. Much wiser than the current crap in FE,
> > where we have packages which conflict with other packages in Core or
> > Extras _explicitly_.
> > 
> 
> FE has packages explicitly conflicting with pkgs in core? I thought that
> was against the rules?

During package review that may be true. Still there are packages which
conflict with eachother explicitly, and the number of "Conflicts" tags in
Extras is increasing, too. "grep ^Confli * -R" lists 46 explicit
conflicts, among them are Core package names. Where they are versioned,
maybe they don't conflict with anything actually. The existence of such
"Conflicts" lines in spec files is dangerous and highly questionable.
Since Extras are always built only against latest updates, would you put
your hand into the fire that it is always safe to upgrade from something
like up-to-date FC(n)+Extras to CD/DVD based FC(n+1)?

Further, stuff like initng even replaces a core OS process, works with a
modified boot menu and clearly is an alternative to Core and not a clean
add-on. And it is not the only Extras package which is run at boot-time
and must not fail ever at first-boot after an upgrade.