ATrpms and FC5/RHEL5

[Jarod Wilson]

On Monday 02 January 2006 16:53, Warren Togami wrote:
> Jeff Pitman wrote:
> > On 1/2/06, Florin Andrei <florin at andrei.myip.org> wrote:
> >> On Mon, 2006-01-02 at 05:24 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> >>> When users choose to use third party repositories they are in many
> >>> cases not aware that they are not just adding packages but also
> >>> replacing existing ones in their system which might be a divergence
> >>> they desire. The discussions initiated by one such user along with
> >>> various posting in fedora forum, user lists and irc channel is enough
> >>> proof that the problem exists.
> >
> > (Offtopic: is anyone else's mail not picking up Rahul's list postings?
> > I've seen several responses to Rahul's email, however I haven't
> > received any from Rahul since 12/27 from fedora-devel. Odd...)
> >
> >> This is currently the single most important problem with package
> >> repositories.
> >
> > See Warren's posting: Core/Extras has no obligation to help the
> > situation.
>
> Furthermore, I personally consider 3rd party repositories to be forks of
> the distribution.  In most cases this is no problem if they do not
> overlap and do not replace Core/Extras packages.
>
> A "fork" is not necessarily a bad thing.  Only users should be aware
> that they use such repositories at their own option, and if they have
> any problems they need to report it to their fork project/repository to
> deal with it.  It is not Fedora's responsibility to workaround problems
> caused by forks or 3rd party software.

While I agree that it isn't necessarily Fedora's responsibility to play nice 
with 3rd-party repositories, I think it ought to be a goal to make using 
3rd-party repositories as painless as possible. I think there are quite a few 
people who might not use Fedora, if not for the 3rd-party repositories.

If there's a fix or functionality addition to a core package needed for 
another package maintained by a 3rd-party, why not push them into the core 
versions? Then people who want software out of the 3rd-party repo but don't 
want core packages replaced get to have their cake and eat it too, and 
3rd-party repositories don't get bashed as much. Everybody wins, no?

Of course, someone within Red Hat would probably have to step up as 3rd-party 
repository liaison  to coordinate the effort... But I think its something 
worth doing, for the sake of the Fedora community at large.

-- 
Jarod Wilson
jarod at wilsonet.com
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