Proposal to reduce anti-bundling requirements

[Haïkel]

2015-10-09 0:42 GMT+02:00 Kevin Kofler <kevin.kofler at chello.at>:
> Neal Gompa wrote:
>> Not that I don't agree that we should pursue unbundling whenever
>> possible, but I don't remember any contract or terms that explicitly said
>> *packagers* do the work of *developers* to re-architect
>> applications/services/etc to do stuff like that. In fact, I thought *the
>> whole point* of RPM packaging (and indeed packaging in general) was to
>> make it so that you could reliably build and install software. Spiting
>> upstream is just asking for trouble, too.
>
> The whole point of a distribution is to ship a well-integrated set of
> packages, not a bunch of isolated sandboxes that don't talk to each other.
> If we ship the latter, we become entirely redundant and provide no service
> whatsoever to our users.
>
> I consider unbundling to be about integration, not development. In most
> cases, you will be making little to no changes to the application's actual
> code, just fix its broken build system.
>

Erm, it may be a wording problem, but the new policy should require
you to unbundle in that case.


>> Personally, I would consider "upstream does not support it" a very valid
>> reason to not unbundle. It gets very hard to pin down where the problems
>> are caused when the rug is pulled out from under you. Some applications do
>> all kinds of things with their libraries or code chunks to make it safe or
>> useful for their needs.
>
> As I said, either fix the application to work with the library or fix the
> library to work with the application (and we need to force our library
> maintainers to be more flexible when it comes to the latter – there too,
> shipping an integrated set of packages is more important than blindly
> following upstream's wishes).
>
>> We should, of course, default to unbundling. But if it's not feasible, we
>> need a firm policy on how to include the software and continually engage
>> on developing solutions that are appealing to everyone on improving the
>> modularity of software and usefulness of reusing system copies of
>> libraries.
>
> It is almost always feasible. The new policy just encourages packagers to
> not even try!
>

No, the new policy encourages packagers to be *honest*, and not hide
issues under the carpet for stupid reasons.
As long as guidelines are not enforced, relaxing them won't do much more harm.

I prefer knowing the problem rather than pretending it does not exist.


H.

>         Kevin Kofler
>
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