Fedora.next in 2014 -- Big Picture and Themes

[Adam Williamson]

On Thu, 2014-01-23 at 16:54 -0500, Josh Boyer wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 23, 2014 at 4:49 PM, Adam Williamson <awilliam at redhat.com> wrote:
> > On Thu, 2014-01-23 at 13:48 -0500, Josh Boyer wrote:
> >
> >> > To be honest my concerns are more with my user hat on than my contributor
> >> > hat - that we will lose the gold standard unified packaging standards and
> >> > single source and mechanism for installing packages.
> >>
> >> I haven't seen anything from any WG that would suggest a deviation
> >> from RPM packaging guidelines or using separate repositories.  It is a
> >> valid concern and one we need to keep an eye on.
> >
> > Um. As I read it, three out of four WGs - desktop, server, and cloud -
> > have at least discussed the possibility of implementing what are, in
> > essence, secondary package management layers. The details differ - 'app
> > bundles' for desktop, 'containers' or whatever for server and cloud -
> > but the effect is the same.
> 
> Secondary being the key word.  None of them are proposing alternate
> RPM repositories or changing the Fedora packaging guidelines.  Tom was
> expressing that he is concerned the Fedora repos would go away or be
> of decreased quality.  None of the WG proposals are altering those
> repos.  They will still exist, much as they do today.

The repos will still exist, but things will be different. At present,
the Fedora repos are the single unified official Fedora method for
deploying software on Fedora products. Any other method you can use to
deploy software is not an 'official Fedora' thing.

If these plans go ahead, we will have multiple official/blessed methods
for deploying software on Fedora, potentially with different policies
about what software they can include and how that software should be
arranged, how dependencies should be handled, and all the rest of it.
Some of these methods will be shared between products, and some will
either only exist in certain products, or at least be clearly associated
with and 'owned' by those products.
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | XMPP: adamw AT happyassassin . net
http://www.happyassassin.net