Fedora Project launches Pre-Extras

[Michael Schwendt]

On Sun, 19 Dec 2004 17:02:25 +0100 (CET), Dag Wieers wrote:

> > A '3' in the filename is ambiguous. An 'fc3' substring in a filename
> > is ambiguous, too. Adding ambiguous and non trustworthy vendor
> > information in the filename doesn't make it better. '.rf' is as poorly
> > chosen as '.fdr' or '.fr'. You expect that users know that .fr does
> > not mean "french" and that .rf doesn't mean "redhat fedora".
> 
> Let's not fool each other. 'fc3' is much more specific and useful than 
> '3' in itself.

It's not specific enough.

> I wasn't aware there was a disttag in fedora.us. That should have been 
> your first clue !

Why should I underestimate your overview?

> And the absence of 'rf' will never allow people to identify packages based 
> on the filename, while having the 'rf' repotag inside is useful for those 
> that understand the concept, but won't harm those that don't.

Identifying packages based on the filename is a crude hack. A
work-around for lack of more comfortable tools.
 
> common sense. Maybe I understand better how users work as I help a few 
> computer-illiterate users to work with Fedora and understand them the 
> concepts.

You jump to conclusions inappropriately.

> Without a recognisable disttag and repotag it's very hard to let 
> people understand.

Then give them the right tools to easy the pain. Joe User would love
to be able to maintain his installed and available packages with a
graphical tool. Joe User thinks that system-config-packages sucks. Joe
User has picked up really bad rumours about low-level "rpm" and
dependency nightmares and wants to avoid it like the plague, so he
doesn't care about the default output of "rpm -q". For those who use
plain rpm, you don't need to create an alias which includes more
details in queries, because these people know how to use query tags.

> > Similarly, there are much better ways how to query a package for who
> > made it. Vendor and Packager information and signature are
> > available. Let's put them to good effect, please.
> 
> Sure, let's use those too.
> 
> But there is a real use to having it in the filename and EVR info, 
> despite the fact that we're using the release tag for something it wasn't 
> designed for.

There is no use for repo tags in EVR info.