[ACTION REQUIRED] Retiring packages for F-17

[Kevin Fenzi]

On Thu, 19 Jan 2012 18:50:50 -0500
Stephen Gallagher <sgallagh at redhat.com> wrote:

> On Thu, 2012-01-19 at 15:30 -0800, Adam Williamson wrote:
> > On Sat, 2012-01-14 at 19:12 +0100, Kevin Kofler wrote:

...snip...

> > >  (And now with my packager hat on, fixing and/or updating a
> > > package in the repo also requires less effort than unretiring a
> > > package which got removed.)
> > 
> > This is an important point: I think it would be much less of a
> > problem to retire packages if the process for unretiring them were
> > not so painful. I _do_ think the unretiring process is an excellent
> > example of unnecessary bureaucracy (as is the renaming process,
> > good lord, what a PITA). Those two things could stand to be trimmed
> > down. At least to 'if you're a provenpackager (or even just a
> > sponsored packager) you can unretire a package without any
> > obstacles'.
> 
> If you file a FESCo ticket to change this policy, this approach would
> have my support. There's no reason that a package rename or
> unretirement should need to go through a full review (although as I
> said in an earlier email, the side-effect here is that such things
> can help curb specrot).

There are two cases here: 

a) rename

The changes involved in a rename are pretty minor. Just usually adding
Obsoletes and Provides and changing the name in the spec file. That
said, it's amazing how easy it is to get this wrong. It happens ALL THE
TIME. ;) having a review to get another pair of eyes was decided to be
the best way to avoid that. I tried (and failed) to get a lower bar for
this. Perhaps current fesco would be interested. 

b) unretirement

This could be pretty massive changes. If something was retired years
ago, the entire spec could be very different. Or it could have been
yesterday. But making the time variable for re-review makes it much
more complex. Last time we looked at this, it was an easy way to tell
if something needed re-review. Is it orphaned? then just take it. Is it
retired? then re-review it. 

kevin



-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 836 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/attachments/20120120/a7d5f908/attachment.sig>