[Fedora-packaging] New packager question

[Patrice Dumas]

On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 09:40:02AM +0800, Gregory Hosler wrote:
>
> Next, as I study PackageMaintainers/UpdatingPackageHowTo and my cvs area, in my cvs area I
> see {common, CVS, devel, EL-4, EL-5, F-7, F-8, F-9} CVS I understand. and I understand
> that the {EL-4, EL-5, F-7, F-8, F-9} sub dirs are for the different fedora/epel repos. I'm
> lacking some clarity as to the migration of files from devel to {EL-4, EL-5, F-7, F-8,
> F-9}, and/or {common}

F-7 is end of life so you shouldn't change it.

Otherwise it is up to the packager. However you should think about what 
is best for your users depending on the target of the package (are these 
users who like the latest package, or do they prefer to stick to a
version in old releases?). If you want to have maximal testing of your
package, and since we are at th ebeginning of a new release cycle for
F-10, you can wait for the devel version to be tested to push it to F-9
and F-8 and wait for testing in bodhi in these branches. However, if the
user base is restricted, and the users don't know bodhi, having the
release hit F-8 and F-9 as soon as possible may also be an option.

For EPEL you should be very cautious, and read:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL/GuidelinesAndPolicies

I personally think that it is bad to break ABI in releases, or do
updates that have incompatible configuration files, but there
are differing opinions on that matter. Which package is it?

--
Pat