Latest thoughts on user level package management

[Honza Horak]

On 06/15/2015 03:32 AM, Nick Coghlan wrote:
> On 11 June 2015 at 13:07, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 4 June 2015 at 17:41, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> = Aleph 4: Developer components =
>>>
>>> Publication format: nix???
>>> Build system: ????
>>> Consumption formats: nix???
>>
>>> = Aleph 5: Upstream components =
>>>
>>> Publication format: language dependent
>>> Build system: ????
>>> Consumption formats: language dependent
>>
>> Colin's latest rpm-ostree announcement on atomic-devel highlighted a
>> very interesting contribution from Alexander Larsson which better
>> leverages our existing work on improving RPM dependency management:
>> using kernel-free rpm-ostree builds to define container contents.
>>
>> Folks can then use OS level containerisation tools like Docker,
>> systemd-nspawn, xdg-app or linux-user-chroot to separate these
>> environments from the main system environment. That last one is
>> particularly important, as it's designed to let you spawn new isolated
>> environments *without needing root access yourself*:
>> http://linux.die.net/man/8/linux-user-chroot.
>>
>> Service containers and other application level update management silos
>> would be composed via rpm-ostree from Aleph 0-3 components, while
>> default installations of host platforms would be composed from Aleph
>> 0-1 components.
>>
>> If we went down that path, then the separation between Alephs 4 & 5
>> wouldn't be necessary
>
> On further reflection, I realised the Aleph 4/5 split still made
> sense, but I had the conditions for crossing the gap wrong. Rather
> than being based on repackaging, it made more sense to distinguish
> packages that had been reviewed for whether or not Fedora could
> reasonably distribute them vs those that Fedora contributors hadn't
> reviewed.
>
> I've now written up a draft of this idea at
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Env_and_Stacks/Projects/PackageReviewProcessRedesign
>
> I changed the proposed tier names as follows:
>
> Aleph 0: Essential components
> Aleph 1: Integrated components
> Aleph 2: Policy compliant components
> Aleph 3: Repackaged components
> Aleph 4: Redistributed components
> Aleph 5: Upstream components
>
> Each tier name is now designed to be a superset of the lower numbered
> tiers such that Aleph 0 packages are: redistributed, repackaged,
> policy compliant, integrated and essential.
>
> The wikified draft also has a summary table at the top describing the
> differences at the various tiers.

Thanks Nick, I've gone through the whole page again and it still makes 
pretty good sense.

As for Aleph 4, the copr makes also sense to me, since at least part of 
the infrastructure would be shared. Mirku, what would you say about 
building also non-rpm content in copr? Does it make sense to you at all?

Honza