Policy proposal for compatibility packages

[Alan]

>
>
> On 02.01.2008 17:21, Brian Pepple wrote:
>> Here's a proposal for the handling of new compat packages:
>>
>> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BrianPepple/DraftCompatPackages
>>
>> FESCo discussed this back at our last meeting, but before we pulled the
>> trigger on this, I want to get feedback from the mailing list.
>
> My 2 cent: proprietary apps (which are not mentioned at all in the
> proposal) sometimes needs older libs to work (those libs of course have
> to be licensed as LGPL or BSD for example). We should allow compat
> packages for those in Fedora; the packager of those libs should not be
> able to block them.

Also those of us building apps that are not in Fedora need those libraries
available just to make the damn code work.  (I am fighting an app that I
want to get moved to current, but I am fighting just getting to work at
all.)

I would like to see the Berkley DB compat packages cover all the
non-current versions.  (That has been my biggest headache as of late.)

> The proposal IMHO tries to solve the problem the wrong way. Having
> compat-packages in the repo is not the biggest problem -- other apps in
> Fedora using those compat-packages IMHO is what we should prevent.

The other issue is overlapping compat packages.  Usually it is a case
where Fedora has one and a third party repository has another.  (wxgtk
comes to mind.)  Makes it painful when you want two applications that
should co-exist, but have different compat libraries that are the same
thing in essence.