Fedora.next in 2014 -- Big Picture and Themes

[Adam Williamson]

On Thu, 2014-01-23 at 17:26 -0500, Josh Boyer wrote:

> > Read all the above sequentially. My point is that although you are
> > technically correct that no WG has proposed doing away with the repos,
> > the RPM format, or yum/dnf, their plans - under a reasonable
> > interpretation of the discussions so far - still invalidate the
> > assumptions he is currently making: he can no longer assume that all he
> > basically has to worry about is getting 'Fedora' installed somehow and
> > he can then install whatever he likes. Broadly stated, it will no longer
> > be valid to conceive of Fedora as a large package repository with some
> > installation methods attached to it, whereas currently that's a pretty
> > reasonable conceptual framework that I believe many people (not just
> > Tom) employ.
> >
> > In other words, Tom was really correct. ;)
> 
> I don't see how you come to that conclusion, at least not without
> making some large assumptions.  The addition of alternate solutions
> for package installation and deployment doesn't preclude people from
> being able to install Fedora and use the underlying tools to point to
> the existing repos.

No, I don't disagree with you there. But the repos don't exist in a
vacuum. Right now they are our way of shipping software in Fedora: our
*only* way. If you want to install the Fedora-y version of a particular
piece of software, you use the repositories. End of story.

All I'm saying is that the .next proposals at least seem to be
introducing the possibility that that will no longer be the case. i.e.,
the possibility that there will be software within the Fedora
(distribution, not project) ecosystem that you cannot deploy using our
package tools and package repositories.

It would of course be *possible* for someone to duplicate any work done
by any of the WGs in the repositories, but it is not *guaranteed* that
this happens. If the desktop WG decides to start shipping some apps as
bundles not packages, and no-one takes up the work of duplicating that
effort in the repositories, then the situation is different to how it is
now: you can no longer rely on the idea that all 'Fedora provided
software' is in the repository system. You must choose between doing
whatever it is you have to do to access the alternative/secondary
distribution methods - which I agree it's not worth speculating about
yet - or not having access to all 'Fedora provided software'. That's all
I'm saying. I'm not drawing any kinds of conclusions from this: my goal
is only to ensure that all implications of possible choices here are
considered.
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | XMPP: adamw AT happyassassin . net
http://www.happyassassin.net