[Guidelines change] Changes to the packaging guidelines

[Michael Catanzaro]

On Thu, 2015-07-09 at 11:22 -0400, Stephen Gallagher wrote:
> Is there any case to allow Supplements: in the Fedora Collection? It
> seems to me like this could be problematic. (e.g. I write a plugin 
> for
> a popular engine and package it, then add Supplements: so that it 
> gets
> pulled in by default whenever that engine is installed. My plugin 
> then
> causes things to crash.) I think it is reasonable for us to forbid
> Supplements: except with FPC exemption. It should be up to the owner 
> of
> the primary package to decide to add Recommends: instead.

The new guidelines say "reverse dependencies may be used with the
agreement of the package maintainer of the targeted package" which
seems good enough to me.

"Reverse dependencies are mainly designed for 3rd party vendors who can
attach their plug-ins/add-ons/extensions to distribution or other 3rd
party packages. Within Fedora the control over which packages a package
requires should stay with the package maintainer. There are, however,
cases when it is easier for the requiring package not needing to care
about all add-ons. In this cases reverse dependencies may be used with
the agreement of the package maintainer of the targeted package."