What would it take to make Software Collections work in Fedora?

[Matthew Miller]

On Wed, Dec 05, 2012 at 02:40:15PM -0500, Jared K. Smith wrote:
> Given the short shelf-life of a Fedora release and the complication
> involved in Software Collections, I'm still not convinced that we
> really need this in Fedora.  Can you give me a concrete case where
> Fedora really needs to be running two different versions of the same
> software, in a production environment?  Given it's longer shelf life
> and different target audience, RHEL is a better candidate -- and the
> record, the company I work for uses Software Collections that way.
> I'm just having a hard time justifying it in my mind for Fedora.

Three things:

1) Fedora is big enough that we have concrete situations where one size
   doesn't fit all. Puppet being broken on F17 (and probably F18 as well)
   is a fine example of something within the distro itself. And, as a
   platform for development, offering more version choices to our users
   would be a strength.

2) On a long-lived platform, Software Collections can provide a way to move
   faster than the base. On a fast-moving platform like Fedora, we could use
   it in the other way: providing longer-lived versions of certain
   components even as the base is upgraded.

3) It's the ecosystem. If using Software Collections on RHEL is good for
   your company, it's good for it to work on Fedora, because a) we're the
   upstream and problems get worked out here, b) development resources
   benefit Fedora rather than being "spent" in a pocket universe, and c)
   Software Collections which work across the whole ecosystem in a
   consistent way make us a stronger choice for development work which may
   eventually end up on Enterprise Linux in production.

Obviously all of these areas (particularly #2) have significant policy,
infrastructure, and resource needs to work out. Maybe they're such that it's
not worth it, we can't do it, or we find a better way to accomplish the same
goals. But either way, that's why I'm bringing this up.



-- 
Matthew Miller  ☁☁☁  Fedora Cloud Architect  ☁☁☁  <mattdm at fedoraproject.org>