F21 Self Contained Change: Playground repository

Tue Apr 8 17:59:25 UTC 2014

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On 04/08/2014 01:32 PM, Richard Shaw wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 8, 2014 at 12:23 PM, Rex Dieter <rdieter at math.unl.edu 
> <mailto:rdieter at math.unl.edu>> wrote:
> 
> Stephen Gallagher wrote:
> 
>> Ask yourself which is more important to most users: 1) My OS is
>> perfectly maintainable by engineers. or 2) My OS lets me install
>> the software I need without hassle.
>> 
>> Offering users a slightly-less stringent repository such as this
>> makes sense.
> 
> Adding repos definitely should not be taken lightly.  Frankly, if 2
> is really something worth doing, then perhaps also the (overly?)
> stringent policies need rethinking.
> 
> I freely admit there's definitely some gray area here, and maybe
> another repo is indeed the right (ie, least-bad) approach.
> 
> 
> I agree. I'm working on several review requests from the same
> developer that "bundle" the same code across his projects (an
> xmlrpc implementation so each program can talk to each other). He
> doesn't want to split it out into an independent library because he
> doesn't want to support its use outside of his own programs, that
> said I've been "working" with him to clean it up but it's a long
> slow process and the software is perfectly usable as is.
> 
> It's probably not feasible, but If there was a way to track 
> downloads/installs so I would know how many people are using the 
> software it would give me an idea if it's worth the trouble to
> "fix" the package to the guidelines or leave it in this
> repository.

In that specific case, my recommendation would be for him to have one
of his packages create a subpackage that dropped that library in a
non-system location (/usr/lib[64]/myproject-shared/mylib.foo) and then
the other packages can link to that library directly.

Putting a library in a private location is a clear sign that other
projects shouldn't attemp to use it (and that you make no claims
whatsoever about its suitability for any other purpose).