On Thu, Oct 08, 2015 at 02:33:34AM +0200, Kevin Kofler wrote:
> I think this strikes a fair balance between promoting packaging
hygiene
> and recognizing that not all upstream communities feel the same way Fedora
> packagers do about bundled libraries.
The thing is, it should NOT matter at all how upstream feels. If we treat
unbundling as something to do with upstream, we already failed. Unbundling
must be done whether upstream likes it or not, even in upstream's spite! And
it's the packager's job to do it: "upstream does not support it" is NOT
a
valid excuse for not unbundling!
In many cases, this effectively means creating a Fedora-specfic fork of
the project. Even if we accept unbundling as goal in itself is a given,
there just aren't enough people in the world who have the inclination,
time, and expertise to do this. Especially when you consider that for
most projects, the only people with *deep* understanding of this kind
of invasive change *are* the upstream. So, in practice, assuming
inclination, time, and *just enough* expertise, what we risk is a
debundled package with new, unique bugs, possibly with security
implications of their own. That's not getting us closer to the goal,
even if it feels like it's a rule that *ought* to.
There are people with inclination and expertise, but not time. The new
rules will help with that; their time and expertise can be focused
where it has the most meaningful impact, which might actually be on
automated tooling rather than debundling.
--
Matthew Miller
<mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org>
Fedora Project Leader