upstream wants me to rename my package

[Dan Williams]

On Fri, 2012-09-07 at 16:54 -0400, Gary Gatling wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> 
> I am working on a package called
> VirtualGL: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=834127
> 
> 
> After contacting the upstream on their mailing list, they seem
> obsessed with being able to install their own rprms and my package
> together at the same time. This seems odd / bad to me since only one
> vglrun could be in the path. He keeps talking about using symlinks
> in /opt and so forth to to somehow make my package able to co-exists
> with his package downloadable at: 

That's not usually something Fedora does.  The package name takes the
name of the upstream project, because the package *is* the delivery
option for that software in Fedora.  We do not care that much about
upstream RPMs that random projects may distribute, because they are
often not tailored to the specifics of Fedora.  We as Fedora packagers
are familiar with the requirements of Fedora, and if the upstream
project really wants control over the Fedora package, then they should
become Fedora packagers themselves.

Yes, you can use the 'alternatives' functionality, but that's mostly
only been used by completely different, competing implementations of the
same program, like Java vs. OpenJDK.  It has not (nor, IMHO, should not)
be used to allow slightly different versions of the same project, which
isn't even forked (since you're just repackaging upstream code), to
coexist and be switched between.

My opinion, at least.

Dan

> 
> http://www.virtualgl.org/
> 
> 
> He does want me to change the package name also. Is it too late for me
> to that after that package has been accepted into fedora?  Here is
> what he says about that:
> 
> 
> In terms of naming, I would suggest naming your RPM something besides
> VirtualGL.  If you are splitting it into multiple RPMs, then this is
> easy.  Just ship RPMs named "VirtualGL-common", "VirtualGL-client",
> "VirtualGL-utils", "VirtualGL-server", "VirtualGL-devel", etc., and
> none
> of them will actually be named "VirtualGL".  Or maybe use
> "VirtualGL-fedora" or some alternative (even lowercase "virtualgl",
> perhaps.)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If a upstream project somehow objects to someone packaging their
> software should you just give up and tell people that the upstream
> would prefer you download their self created rpms or is it considered
> acceptable to go ahead and package their software over their
> objections?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> He says at the end of his email:
> 
> 
> "'I'm willing to help out in any way I can, within reason, but I will
> also
> re-iterate that VirtualGL was never really designed to be integrated
> into an O/S distribution."
> 
> 
> Thanks for any thoughts you guys might have about this surprising
> reaction...