F21 System Wide Change: Headless Java

[Miloslav Trmač]

On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 10:46 PM, Toshio Kuratomi <a.badger at gmail.com> wrote:
> In fedora we do our best to figure out what the best course of action is and
> then we execute that.
"The best course of action" _given some limited resources_, which may
drastically alter the outcome.

> Angle 2) Reduce the benefits of the second virtual provide
>   - Propose alternate means of tracking what packages have been audited and
>     found to actually need full java.

Spec files are a really horrible work tracking system, and in this
case we _shouldn't have any work to track_ anyway.

If the goal is to do something worthwhile for a subset of packages
that someone cares about, we don't need tracking.

If the goal is to actually solve the problem in "the best course of
action" (to use your words), _software_ should be determining which
one of the two dependencies is required, and inserting it.  Not
people.  Not tracked in spec files.  Not tracked in bugzilla.  Not
ever appearing as an item in a package review.  Make it an one-time
project, write tests for the software that manages the dependencies,
forget about it forever.[1]

(IIRC somewhere in the thread it's been suggested that software can't
know which one to use: how would the maintainers know then?)
    Mirek

[1] This glosses over how would one transition from spec files with a
manual Requires: to a Requires: managed by a tool; however the same
principles should ideally apply here as well.