new RPM version and Feature process (was: Re: Heads-up: brand new RPM version about to hit rawhide)

[Josh Boyer]

On Wed, 2008-07-09 at 20:12 +0200, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> On 09.07.2008 12:51, Panu Matilainen wrote:
> > At long last, we are about to get a brand new RPM version (alpha snapshot 
> > at the moment) into rawhide. The list of changes from 4.4.2.x is massive 
> > and a full summary needs a separate posting (will follow as time permits), 
> > this is just a heads-up of immediate consequences for Fedora packagers and 
> > rawhide consumers:
> 
> Sounds great, thanks Panu and others! Much appreciated and looked 
> forward to.
> 
> But this announcement made me wondering: We have a big and complicated 
> Feature process [1] in Fedora that keeps a whole lot of people and 
> committees (especially FESCo) busy. Afaics the new RPM version is 
> something that can be considered a "feature" [2]. It was afaics not 
> approved yet by FESCO [3] or even proposed [4]. I would expect going 
> backwards to an older RPM in rawhide later will be next to impossible or 
> very very hard. IOW: once it's in rawhide for a few days FESCO kind of 
> has no other chance then to approve this feature, in case it ever comes 
> up for a Feature vote in a FESCo meeting.

Good point.

> So is the most of the Feature process (and especially FESCo's approval) 
> useless overhead? 

I don't think so.  I think the rpm example illustrates the weakest point
of the process, and it should be worked on rather than be declared as
useless.

It does happen to be my biggest pet peeve of the Feature process,
because this will now become a "Feature" that gets defacto approval
simply because it's already in.  I HATE doing that, because as you said
it is largely a waste of time.  So we need to be a bit more proactive
about it.

I'll argue that not every package upgrade is worth a Feature
designation.  But the major ones should be.  Firefox 3 had one.  I
believe OpenOffice.org should have one.  For a major rpm upgrade, there
should be one as well.

josh