Software Management call for RFEs

[Florian Weimer]

On 05/23/2013 03:30 PM, Stijn Hoop wrote:
> On Thu, 23 May 2013 14:02:34 +0200
> Jan Zelený <jzeleny at redhat.com> wrote:

>> The problem is that some of these languages have fundamentally
>> different philosophy than Fedora and unfortunatelly it's not a
>> mix-and-match situation. That being said, there already are different
>> tools to create spec files from those upstream representations
>> (gem2spec, cpan2spec, ...)
>
> Yes, it is true that there sometimes is a different philosophy, but
> fundamentally is "in the eye of the beholder". If there are domain2spec
> tools available NOW, why would it not be possible technically?

The main difference is that most other packaging systems consider it 
perfectly acceptable to depend on specific version (or even a specific 
build of a specific version) of package.  Fedora generally only ships a 
single version of every package.  Reverse dependencies are expected to 
be rebuilt against the most recent version.  If that is not possible, 
those reverse dependencies have to be ported over.

This is a fundamental cultural difference.  The Fedora way requires more 
work upfront, but in the long term, it scales much better, and it is the 
only approach that can guarantee you can fix critical bugs for all users 
who are potentially affected by them.

-- 
Florian Weimer / Red Hat Product Security Team