TeX Live 2008/9 packaging and you

[Tom "spot" Callaway]

On 06/05/2009 08:02 AM, Jindrich Novy wrote:

> Ok, so let's consider the thousand srpms way.
> 
> Not sure about it, but is there a possibility of mass package review?
> I mean especially a typical case of 90% TL packages which will only
> differ in description, summary, NVR and filelist.
> 
> My point is that even if I create a script to generate all the
> hundreds of package review bugzillas, every package could be reviewed
> by someone else with different objections/RFEs. Despite all the
> bugzilla/mail pollution and waste of resources I'm still unable to maintain
> so many reviews. Mainly because specs are automatically generated so a
> change in one spec affect all others.

Well, we have never done this. The downside that I can see is that:

* It requires one reviewer to manage all of them, the load is far more
difficult to evenly distribute with "mass tickets", and we will want to
have several reviewers help out here (if only for the sake of my
fleeting sanity).

* Even if they only differ in description, summary, NVR and filelist, we
still want to check that each of these items are correct.

What might help is if we had a basic set of Packaging Guidelines for TL
packages, with an example spec template. That way, reviewers can quickly
compare the spec against the template, see that they match, and do the
other checks necessary (legal, integrity, etc).

I think we just need to suck it up and file the bugs. I'd suggest
perhaps seeking out volunteer reviewers on fedora-devel once we have the
Packaging Guidelines for TL packages in place.

>> It's probably also worth having either metapackages or comps groups for
>> the various collections.
> 
> There are 84 such metapackages in TL, mainly divided to lang
> support/fonts/native docs. There are 10 scheme metapackages on top of
> them so maybe having separate comp groups for them is a good idea.

We should document this clearly in the Fedora wiki somewhere, if it is
not already done.

~spot