half baked idea for further baking: "fedora-ugly" repo

[Matthew Miller]

This idea has come up several times at DevConf, and I thought I'd throw it
out here so it can maybe get further development and discussion.

COPRs are cool, but very much the uncharted wilderness. The Fedora
distribution proper is a stockade fort with high walls -- it's very nice
iside (with some rough parts of town... I can take this analogy all the
way...) but the barrier to get in is giantic and topped with spikes. 

And it's not just that there's a lack of guidelines. Different COPRs repos
don't need to work together, and it's imposible to tell which will or to
have any epectation that two which work together today will work together
tomorrow. And, packages aren't signed at all.

So, the proposal: a new repository in the Fedora Project which I am
tentatively calling "Fedora Ugly". It could be "Fedora Staging", but I think
that promises a bit much (some things may remain here for a really, really
long time). This repo would provide an integration space where packages from
diverse COPRs repos could come together, and also be more discoverable by
other Fedora developers and users (just add one repo).

Some specifics:

 - it could feed from COPRs -- add your packages by checking a box
 - packages would only go in if they meet minimal automatic gating --
   can't conflict with other packages
 - possibly some sort of automatic flagging of crazy %pre or %post package
   scripts?
 - if they don't meet the gating, package owner would get an email
   explaining the problem
 - Fedora packaging guidelines don't apply fully, but maybe some subset
   is appropriate?
 - degree to which packages would be allowed here forever vs. encouraged
   to improve so they can eventually be in the main repo is an open question
 - repo would be off by default, but easily enabled in yum or in Gnome
   Software
 - packages would be signed, possibly by a different key from the main
   Fedora one. 
 - signing could be automatic rather than manual
 - ugly-testing or ugly-updates repo, and rolling release vs versioning? to
   be figured out!

What do people think of this idea overall? Anyone interested in polishing
this up into a Real Thing?


-- 
Matthew Miller    --   Fedora Project    --    <mattdm at fedoraproject.org>