[Fedora-packaging] nodejs-ws - should I change it to a noarch

[Ralf Corsepius]

On 02/04/2015 09:47 AM, Stephen Gallagher wrote:
> (Sorry for top-post)
> I'm forwarding this to the packaging list for input on the
> arch-to-noarch question.
>
>
> On Tue, 2015-02-03 at 10:42 -0600, Troy Dawson wrote:
>> Hi All,
>> I was going through, updating my nodejs package for rawhide (f22) when I
>> found the nodejs-ws went from binary to pure javascript with version 0.7.1.
>>
>> So, my question is this.  Do I continue to leave it as an arch, so I
>> don't break thing, so should I go to noarch.
>>
>> Switching from an arch to a noarch has bitten me in the past when people
>> do updates.  I don't know if that is still the case.
I vaguely recall yum once had problems with such changes and vaguely 
recall packagers having had problems related to %{_isa} handling.
However, I am not aware of such issues having happened in more recent 
past and believe these issues to be resolved. A couple of experiments 
would quickly tell if these considerations still apply.

There also have been packaging issues with corner-cases, when a 
noarch-package wasn't applicable to some particular architecture.


But I recall rel-eng had (has?) broader problems with such arch<->noarch 
switches, thanks to them having issues with their tooling (createrepo, 
mash (?), ... ), which did not process such switches correctly (e.g. 
old.<arch>.rpm packages were not removed upon package updates, which 
switched to no-arch).

>> What are people's thoughts.  Should I switch it to a noarch?
Let me put it this way: Such switches must me safe on rawhide, if they 
unhide problems, rel-eng needs address these.

Ralf