Software management: Call for RFEs results!

[Jan Zelený]

On 13. 10. 2013 at 22:19:16, Michael Stahnke wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 5:34 AM, Jan Zelený <jzeleny at redhat.com> wrote:
> > Hello everyone,
> > as you might remember I issued a call for RFEs on this list during the
> > spring. The participation was not bad at all, we have collected so many
> > data that it took us several months to discuss and process it.
> > 
> > Now I have some results for you. Attached to this email you can find a
> > strategy document that a) outlines the strategy that we will commit to in
> > the next 3-5 years and b) contains all the RFEs that were recognized as
> > valid RFEs and were accepted to be implemented as a part of our strategy.
> > 
> > Please note that the rest of the RFEs from the discussion was also
> > evaluated but most likely rejected. If your RFE is not on the list, you
> > can drop me an email and I'll tell you more specific reasons why we
> > decided not to put it on the list.
> > 
> > If you have any other questions, comments or notes regarding the document,
> > feel free to to use this list for the discussion.
> > 
> > Thanks
> > Jan
> > 
> > PS: I'll be AFK for the weekend so I'll comment on your replies on Monday
> > --
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> 
> First off, thanks for this. I'm glad some people are really trying to
> look at the path forward.   I'm also sorry I missed your RFE then.
> High traffic-lists sometimes get skipped over :(
> 
> 
> I like the goals of the paper. My main concerns is this addresses
> technical issues that are already in play.  It doesn't address several
> items that are not technical issues which IMHO, is the main reason RPM
> isn't used for everything.
> 
> Developers don't do deployments with RPM...at least not inside Fedora.
> Anything sane is actually against Packaging Guidelines. So that
> becomes a problem, and developers skip it. If  developers (or
> operations people) are savvy enough to make RPMs, they are used once
> and not shared because they wouldn't get accepted into Fedora/EPEL.
> 
> Also, sometimes developers/deployments need multiple versions of
> things installed.

This horse has been beaten enough. See [1] for advice how to package multiple 
versions of one package. That's the best we can do and that's also the best we 
consider being *reasonably* maintainable.

> Is there a an effort that complements this one on the policy/non-technical
> side?

Well, if you have some problems with Fedora packaging policy, I suggest 
communicating your ideas to the Fedora Packaging Committee. If your request is 
really reasonable, I'm sure they'll reflect it in the policy. However the 
problem usually is that developers have very different idea of reasonable than 
distribution maintainers because both groups have very different goals.

Not to be only negative here, take a look at the COPR initiative, I expect it 
will solve the problem you are talking about by offering external repositories 
that will be easily reachable from Fedora but won't be a part of the Fedora 
itself. The content of these repositories will be governed by the same law as 
Fedora packages are (SW patents, ...) but technical policies should be a lot 
less strict.

Would that address your concerns?

Thanks
Jan

[1] http://rpm.org/wiki/PackagerDocs/MultipleVersions