submitted RPMs and awaiting action?

[Ranjan Maitra]

I do not also agree that this ML is not appropriate for bringing up points of general interest to all Fedora users. But I think my comments will be becoming repetitive soon so unless something new pops up, there is not much point in rehashing the points. 

Thanks to Michael for the extended and animated discussion.

On Wed, 2 Dec 2015 00:00:23 +0100 Michael Schwendt <mschwendt at gmail.com> wrote:

> If at all, the bureaucracy that could be removed is the review process for
> packages from existing members of the packager group, who have demonstrated
> before that they know their stuff.
> 
> There are some, who could be highly productive and could pipe out a
> higher number of packages (e.g. needed dependencies), if they didn't need
> to wait for a second pair of eyes to check even trivial packages.
> 

:-)

I was not talking of removing the "bureaucracy", but making the process a bit less bureaucratic. But you are right: I am sure that these things have been thought over by people more experienced and knowledgeable than me. 

> "Could, could, could". That's always the same cheap talk. Over the years
> there have been various tools to automate RPM packaging *including*
> determining BuildRequires and explicit Requires. Where is the tool that's
> sufficiently complete and safe to use? It's still much easier for human
> packagers to do it right and use custom tools to automate some tasks.

Probably nothing, but perhaps could be a good starting point.
 
> > At the very least, have it suggest a skeleton.
> 
> A skeleton for what?
> Do you realize how much packages can differ? For example, packages for
> Java stuff vs. packages for Perl or Python?

Yes, but there would be skeletons for each of the different main types. Can be done perhaps, perhaps not. Just an  idea.
 
> There's the template generate "rpmdev-newspec" in the rpmdevtools
> package. It creates a spec file for building and packaging a typical
> Autotools based program.

I find python far more difficult to handle than any of the others.

> It's *so* simple to ignore those warnings (where rpmlint fails because
> of poor dictionaries or related issues). Why do you continue to blame
> rpmlint for some of its false positives?

Well, if we want to end up with a more automated process, then reducing false flags is a must.

> Have you run the fedora-review tool on your packages and/or bugzilla
> review tickets yet?

I have not run the fedora-review tool, but I did run the koji build tool (some time ago and even now, on f22, f23, rawhide) and it passed for both packages. Is this not adequate?

> There is much higher load for the submitters, provided that they really
> want to maintain the package and not only dump it into a repository.

OK.

> Anyone, who thinks that the review process is too high a hurdle, has never
> practised package maintainance before. Not with personal packages in some
> private repo, and not with a public personal repo either. Certainly not
> for a period of let's say a year or so. Or multiple years in RHEL/EPEL-style.

Agreed: I have no prior experience.

> > It sort of defeats the purpose of Linux.

> Please elaborate. What do you have in mind here?
Simply that niche packages are going to be in less demand and would hurt those users who have unusual likes. Not every one should have to be a programmer to want stuff that they would like to use. Sylfilter, for instance, is extremely lightweight, and does an extremely good job. I have packaged it for my use, but others may find the hurdle too high to compile from source or to evaluate a package submitted to BZ.

> 
> > Ideally, if only two people have need for a package, and if the first
> > person is the packager (say), then how likely is it for the second user
> > to actually be a member of BZ and the review set, rather than go off to
> > some other distribution (AUR, say) where things are easier to come by?
> 
> Pardon? Do you intend to play the "attempted blackmail" card here? That's
> quite common for so-called "distro-hoppers", who would switch back and
> forth between distributions for every pet peeve they come up with. ;-)

I have used and contributed to Fedora from the days of Fedora 1 (RH7 and RH9, actually). I don't think I can be accused of whatever you think you are accusing me of. I have come to, however, also appreciate Arch's fabulous documentation on, well, almost everything, and also like  its rolling-release model. But I have invested in and benefited too much from the community here to give it up. 

.......
> Some of the plans may become fruitful, but require that the contributors
> are willing to leave the dumping ground level by offering a bit more than
> a src.rpm that seems to build. As soon as some packagers receive a first
> batch of bugzilla reports from frustrated package users that have started
> using a package, they hide somewhere.

It is a good point. But the packager is only responsible for the packaging, generally not for upstream issues. I tend to think that most of the issues I have found are from upstream.

Anyway, thanks again for the discussion!

Best wishes,
Ranjan

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