Proposal to reduce anti-bundling requirements

[Orion Poplawski]

On 09/10/2015 07:53 AM, Stephen Gallagher wrote:
> 
> Right now, we have a policy that essentially forbids source code from
> being bundled into a package. In technical terms, this means
> essentially that the packaging policies mandate that any code that
> appears more than once in the repository must be turned into a shared
> library and dynamically linked into any package that requires it. Any
> package that wants an exception to this must petition the Fedora
> Packaging Committee and get an explicit exemption from this policy.
> This process is heavyweight and sometimes inconsistent in how the
> decision is made.
> 
> I would like to propose that the no-bundled-libraries policy be
> amended  as follows: "Any package that has an existing mechanism to
> link against a shared system library and functions correctly when
> doing so must link against that library and not bundle it internally.
> Any package whose upstream releases cannot link against a shared
> system library (or are incompatible with the version in Fedora) may
> bundle that library (without requiring a special exemption) but MUST
> add Provides: bundled(<libname>) = <version> in the spec file for each
> known bundled library.(This will allow us to track down the bundling
> when we need to). Package maintainers should continue attempt to
> engage upstream to support linking against shared system libraries
> wherever possible, due to the advantages it provides the package
> maintainer."

I'm not quite ready to give up the fight for those things that are packaged in
Fedora.  While the current process can cumbersome and unfortunately
inconsistent at times, I've felt overall that more good than bad has come out
of it.  And exceptions regularly do get granted, especially if the parties
involved appear willing to try to work out the issues involved.

I would argue that we need to be packaging much less than we do.  Many
languages have developed packaging infrastructures around themselves and
perhaps it's time to let those become the primary means of distributing such
software.

-- 
Orion Poplawski
Technical Manager                     303-415-9701 x222
NWRA, Boulder/CoRA Office             FAX: 303-415-9702
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