[Fedora-packaging] are subpackages required for optional loadable libraries?
Toshio Kuratomi
a.badger at gmail.com
Wed Feb 27 15:46:09 UTC 2008
Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski wrote:
> On Wednesday, 27 February 2008 at 03:55, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
> [...]
>> So the questions I'd see us needing to address are:
>>
>> 1) What are the criteria to split a package into multiple subpackages as
>> opposed to keeping modules in a single/few subpackage.
>
> Plugins implementing the same functionality using different external libraries
> (database engine support plugins are a typical example) must be packaged
> separately. A developer testing if the software works equally well with all
> supported DBEs will just have to install all of them by hand. We'll assume
> he's competent enough to do it.
>
+1
> If the plugins do different things, it should be left for the packager to
> decide. Meta-packages come handy here (and are my preferred solution).
>
Not sure here. When coupled with the answer to #2 I think we should
have some guidance (packager gets final say but still some guidance)
We want the packager to know that leaving multiple disparate plugins in
a single package should have benefit to the end-user. If it doesn't
help the end user to have a single package then they need to break it
up. It can be a lot of work to package correctly but that is what the
packager is agreeing to when they submit a package.
>> 2) When a subpackage is not split, should Requires be used to pull in all
>> of the dependencies or should they be used to pull in none of the
>> dependencies.
>
> All, of course. Otherwise we end up with bugreports saying the plugins
> don't work (because we intentionally crippled them).
>
+1
>> 3) What is the default level of functionality that should work out of the
>> box?
>
> That should be left for the packager to decide.
>
I think we need guidance here as well. For instance, if a web
application needs a database to work out of the box but that database
could be any of mysql, postgres, or sqlite, do we require that one of
those be installed?
So... I don't see anything here that needs to go into the Guidelines but
I do think there's some stuff that should be thought about and go on the
wiki as recommendations of how to tell whether a subpackage needs to be
made.
-Toshio
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