Considering GNOME 3.12 as an F20 update

Ralf Corsepius rc040203 at freenet.de
Fri Apr 4 02:38:00 UTC 2014


On 04/03/2014 06:22 PM, Matthew Miller wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 03, 2014 at 06:09:43PM +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
>> You didn't mention the most important question:
>>
>> Did the API or ABI change in backward-incompatible way?
>>
>> If the answer to this question is "yes", then the answer to updating
>> to gnome-3.12 needs to be no, because such changes in released
>> versions of Fedora are not allowed.
>
> I think we should ground the discussion in the actual policy, which doesn't
> say that, but does say "ABI changes in general are very strongly discouraged
> and "Avoid Major version updates, ABI breakage or API changes if at all
> possible." That is significantly more qualifed. And more to the point, it
> says
>
>     Some classes of software will not fit in these guidelines. If your
>     package does not fit in one of the classes below, but you think it should
>     be allowed to update more rapidly, propose a new exception class to FESCO
>     and/or request an exception for your specific update case.
>
>     Note that you should open this dialog BEFORE you build or push updates.

You should take the spirit behind this into account:

ABI/API breakages are bad and should be avoided, unless they are 
inevitable, because they break and disturb user installations.

> which is exactly what is happening here.

That's why I am asking. I want Mr. Clasen or somebody else from Gnome to 
provide a clear answer. So far, as I perceive Mr. Clasen, he 
deliberately avoided to answer.

> <http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Updates_Policy>
>
> Now, in reading that policy, there are quite a few things that match the
> "Things that would make it less likely to grant a request" list. But, on the
> other hand, by having a longer-than-typical Fedora release cycle this time
> around, we are already in special circumstances territory.

Ralf



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