Workstation feedback on generic-release-workstation request?

[Stephen Gallagher]

On Mon, 2014-10-20 at 09:44 -0400, Matthias Clasen wrote:
> On Mon, 2014-10-20 at 09:36 -0400, Stephen Gallagher wrote:
> 
> > > Not sure I understand this. Why does firewalld-config-workstation need
> > > to require any release package ? That seems backwards to me.
> > > 
> > 
> > It's a relic of the way the dependency-resolution has to work. When
> > installing the 'firewalld' package (or any other package that
> > potentially needs to have a different configuration on one product than
> > another), we need to have a way for yum and dnf to pick the correct
> > configuration package.
> > 
> > We can't do the reverse -- have [fedora|system]-release-workstation
> > depend on firewalld-config-workstation -- in the general case because it
> > would force the inclusion of the application into the unremovable set.
> > In the firewalld case, this would probably be acceptable, but in the
> > case of something like Apache (which has been suggested would probably
> > benefit from different defaults on Server and Workstation), it really
> > wouldn't be.
> > 
> > So the specific need for the dependency there is to work around
> > depsolving limitations. Please trust me that when I put that proposal
> > together, I talked to the RPM, yum, dnf and anaconda folks as well as
> > getting the proposal approved by the FPC. It's the only feasible way to
> > do this at the moment (upcoming RPM enhancements with advanced
> > dependencies may make this better, but those aren't going to show up any
> > sooner than F23).
> 
> I trust you. But I still don't think this is right. The way it should
> work is that
> 
> firewalld-config-workstation provides firewalld-config
> firewalld requires firewalld-config
> fedora-release-workstation requires firewalld-config-workstation and
> firewalld
> 
> > it would force the inclusion of the application into the unremovable
> > set
> 
> Only if you make firewalld-config-workstation require firewalld - I
> don't think you should.

I see your point (and I agree I'd rather see something like it), but it
still has the following problems:

1) You now have to release an update for fedora-release-workstation
every time a new package gets a per-product configuration (to add the
new Requires)

2) Every deployment of Workstation now carries configuration for
packages that may never be installed (and configuration isn't
necessarily small, though most of the time it will be).

3) From a user's perspective, if they see configuration for a service or
application in their package list, they may assume that package is
installed and running, leading to confusion.


What I'm looking forward to in the F23 timeframe is that RPM is expected
to grow the ability to specify dependency conditionals. For example if I
install the Apache package, it would have:

CondRequires: apache-config-workstation if system-release-workstation
CondRequires: apache-config-server if system-release-server

This will be much cleaner. (The syntax above is probably not exactly
right, but it's the general idea)
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