[Fedora-packaging] Re: supporting closed source operating systems?

[Jeff Spaleta]

On Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 1:23 PM, Axel Thimm <Axel.Thimm at atrpms.net> wrote:
> But what I'd like to still see addressed is whether there will be a
> policy of what other tools/apps are acceptable for Fedora. mingw,
> libvirt etc. do have their justification as a means to an end, but
> what happens when Joe Random Packager discovers the mingw package and
> thinks this is an invitation to rebuild all of Fedora for Windows
> (where possible) and submit as a new package? Do we want this? If not
> how do we prevent this or communicate it properly to the packager
> base?

So basically the question is.. how much of our existing set of
software is appropriate to rebuild with the mingw chain and make
available as binary packages in the project itself in the form of
packages?  If I'm following the technical discussion correctly.. then
we are talking about packaging some set  library binaries meant to be
used with mingw.  It's not just about making mingw available as a
tool..but its also about building some library binaries with mingw and
packaging them as part of Fedora as part of a mingw development
environment. Or am I wrong about that?

For the sake of this discussion lets just limit ourselves to libraries
and development packages..that's still a big space.

How many libraries should we rebuild and package as part of a
functional mingw development environment as windows DLL?   Is it
appropriate to rebuild all of our libraries such that they can be used
with mingw? Saving people the necessary effort to rebuild the
libraries themselves?

Is this really an appropriate use of our Project mirroring and
repository resources?  How much bigger would the repository end up
being if all our existing libraries were repackaged as windows DLLs?
Is that potential resource burn worth the trade off of making it
turnkey for people to mingw to build windows executables on Fedora?

The base package definitions at
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingDrafts/MinGW may make obvious
sense as a way to get the mingw tool into the distribution. But do the
concepts of packaging  Windows DLL and Windows EXEs make sense for us?
Do we want to be distributing a full range of Windows DLLs and Windows
EXEs in our repository? Or do we want to distribute the absolute
minimum set of base packages to get mingw into the hands of users and
let them rebuild the DLLs they need from source?

I'm not sure I'm okay with rebuilding our entire collection of
libraries as Windows DLLs and packaging them as part of our
distribution, taking up project repository and mirror space.

-jef