RPM submission procedure

[Michael Schwendt]

On Thu, 8 Jan 2004 03:39:06 +0100, Axel Thimm wrote:

> > However, the list archives of fedora-devel at fedora.us between November 2002
> > and April 2003 contain many political discussions and no real signs of
> > the packagers wanting to merge into an open community project. 
> 
> You wear funny glasses. The "political discussions" were about
> creating specifications that either serve a single repo only or more
> (both then existing and future repos). And then people got upset with

You write "people" to hide the fact that only a very few persons have
participated in those discussions.

> o a call to clone freshrpms instead of extending it.

Nice play with words. Fedora.us' goal was to depend solely on Red Hat
Linux or Fedora Core, respectively, and not on any independent none-open
repository maintained by single individuals.

> o fedora.us decisions being made by a single person after consulting
>   two pals on irc.

Which has been criticized and stopped, AFAIK. Nowadays there are a few
more interested people at fedora.us who voice their concerns and who are
consulted before any policy is changed. But it is also understandable that
this infamous "single person" wanted to get a community project getting
started rather sooner than later. Fedora.us has infrastructure in place
which we can use *right now* and which older projects, such as
rhcontrib.bero.org or rpmforge.net had not, and which other project don't
have either. What we do with it is up the community who is free to
support/contribute and influence future decisions.

> o any input about interrepository issues bouncing off on hostility or
>   ignorance.

Indeed, the term "hostility" is not far off. Some threads in the archives
can be described best as heated controversies. Nowadays it is not much
different on this list, unfortunately, because some people continue to
blame specific individuals.

> So what signs exactly were you expecting? Why should someone who's
> work and input is being rejected want to merge with fedora.us?

The question is biased. Of course there has never been interest in
offering existing packages under the fedora.us "brand" or applying QA
procedures for packages which "seem to be just fine". No further comment.

We've been through this before.  I don't maintain a huge repository and
popular website myself and hence I don't have the duty to maintain several
hundred packages for different distributions and to track a mailing-list
for possible bug reports or issues. But I know what it is like to create
packages because the software has not been packaged yet and what a great
feeling it is to find well-made and well-maintained packages provided by
someone else which I can rely on.
 
> > The archives are pretty tiresome to read with all the debates about making
> > fedora.us adapt existing packaging practise instead of working on improved
> > guidelines for a single source of extra packages (well, except for
> > packages with patenting and licencing issues).
> 
> Now that's utter crap.

Now that's hostility.

> > In reality, what those individual repository maintainers want is total
> > control about their own packages and, of course, continueing to run their
> > own branded repositories with fame and glory in mind.
> 
> O.K., you try to reach for below the belt, I won't bite.

Get an unbiased person to wade through the fedora-devel at fedora.us list
archives and comment on what impression he gets. But of course, I'm
considered biased, too, and "wear funny glasses".

> > Official Fedora Extras gives the chance to redo some of the pre fedora.us
> > discussions. And yet again, some of the individual repo maintainers showed
> > interest only in repository inter-operability or avoiding modification to
> > their packages inflicted by changes in Fedora Core, e.g. /etc/redhat-release
> > detection or package release distribution tags.
> 
> Please explain. Package disttags have been sorted out after a very
> long staving thread. So what are you referring at?

Exactly the overly long starving thread(s).
 
> > > believing the project would serve as a coordinating entity,
> > 
> > With individual repository maintainers not being willing to compromise
> > that has turned out to become impossible or *very* time-consuming.
> 
> How can something that has not even been tried become *very*
> time-consuming? Are you applying revision to history?

Please sum up, what has been attempted at by fedora-devel at fedora.us prior
to April 2003?
 
> > > Anyway the current setup of heretic repos is working quite
> > > well. Become a heretic yourself today! ;)
> > 
> > Except for package conflicts which the ordinary user encounters easily
> > when he tries to mix freshrpms and ATrpms.
> 
> I wonder how I managed to grow my repository from day one compatible
> with freshrpms then, and how it works that every ATrpms user has
> another 5-11 other repositories active including freshrpms? I must
> have probably be dreaming that this is happening.

Check your sources of input. Check some message boards and
mailing-lists. Conflicts between your packages and freshrpms.net do exist.
People are smart enough to work around conflicts and don't make it a big
issue.

> Have you ever checked the conflicts you would encounter mixing
> fedora.us and <name a big repo here>?

Fedora.us is neither designed as being mixable nor is it advertized as
being mixable.

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