Fedora Extras is extra

[William M. Quarles]

Ralf Corsepius wrote:

> On Mon, 2004-11-29 at 15:11 -0500, Matthew Miller wrote:
> 
>>On Mon, Nov 29, 2004 at 06:44:10PM +0000, Michael A. Peters wrote:
>>
>>>Another thing - I hate beuracracy but this may be needed - a neutral  
>>>naming authority. In cases where packages conflict simply because of  
>>>different package name, if the naming can't be fixed between the repos  
>>>themselves, let an independent community group decide.
>>
>>Fedora Extras _should be_ that independent community group.
> 
> 1. Fedora Extras is run and conducted by RH.
> 
> 2. It is RH, who until now has refused to cooperate with developers on
> selecting N-V-R conventions. Until now, each of the 3rd parties (which
> Fedora.US had been one of) has invented its own conventions.

Not really.  They actually are consulting with each other to try to keep 
up compatibility.  But most of the maintainers of the packages in 
question simply take their name and version number from the source, 
which tends to minimize the "N-V" problems.  The R problems are another 
story altogether.

> 3. N-V-R's are only one kind package conflicts being involved in
> incompatibilities which occur when mixing repositories. There are many
> more, much worser hidden package dependencies "occasional users" will
> rarely notice.

If tree falls in the forest but nobody is there to hear it, does it make 
a sound?  My counterquestion would be, "Does it really matter?"  For the 
user whom it does matter then (s)he most likely will notice and will let 
the maintainer know about it, which chances are (s)he is already in 
communication with the other package's maintainer as they try to 
coordinate to correct the problem.  It really isn't as big of an issue 
as it might have been in the past.

----
Peace,
William