Updating branches

[Richard W.M. Jones]

This question has come up a lot: Whether we should backport changes
from Rawhide to EL-5/F-10.  A corollary is whether we should keep
certain packages in synch across the different branches (particularly
mingw32-filesystem).  This is my opinion on this subject.  Comments &
follow-ups welcome.

No we should not do this, except in the following cases:

(1) When a package is approved after a Fedora review, we should create
new packages in EL-5/F-10 as long as this doesn't require a huge
amount of effort.

(2) We should upgrade those packages to track the native versions of
packages[1] and where there are security updates.

(3) If someone asks *and* is willing to do all the required work
(provide a sensible, working patch), then we or they can upgrade the
package.

But apart from those reasons, we should leave working packages in
EL-5/F-10 untouched.

In particular there are two outstanding patches from mingw32-
filesystem-44 in Rawhide which haven't been backported.  The C++
compiler detection stuff isn't necessary for F-10 or EL-5 - it appears
that the brokenness comes about as a side-effect of something in
libtool-2.  The rpmlint message suppression is cosmetic.  So both
patches fall under clause (3) above.

Rich.

[1] We need to get Dan's compare stuff working ...

-- 
Richard Jones, Emerging Technologies, Red Hat  http://et.redhat.com/~rjones
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