On Monday 02 January 2006 16:53, Warren Togami wrote:
Jeff Pitman wrote:
> On 1/2/06, Florin Andrei <florin(a)andrei.myip.org> wrote:
>> On Mon, 2006-01-02 at 05:24 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>>> When users choose to use third party repositories they are in many
>>> cases not aware that they are not just adding packages but also
>>> replacing existing ones in their system which might be a divergence
>>> they desire. The discussions initiated by one such user along with
>>> various posting in fedora forum, user lists and irc channel is enough
>>> proof that the problem exists.
>
> (Offtopic: is anyone else's mail not picking up Rahul's list postings?
> I've seen several responses to Rahul's email, however I haven't
> received any from Rahul since 12/27 from fedora-devel. Odd...)
>
>> This is currently the single most important problem with package
>> repositories.
>
> See Warren's posting: Core/Extras has no obligation to help the
> situation.
Furthermore, I personally consider 3rd party repositories to be forks of
the distribution. In most cases this is no problem if they do not
overlap and do not replace Core/Extras packages.
A "fork" is not necessarily a bad thing. Only users should be aware
that they use such repositories at their own option, and if they have
any problems they need to report it to their fork project/repository to
deal with it. It is not Fedora's responsibility to workaround problems
caused by forks or 3rd party software.
While I agree that it isn't necessarily Fedora's responsibility to play nice
with 3rd-party repositories, I think it ought to be a goal to make using
3rd-party repositories as painless as possible. I think there are quite a few
people who might not use Fedora, if not for the 3rd-party repositories.
If there's a fix or functionality addition to a core package needed for
another package maintained by a 3rd-party, why not push them into the core
versions? Then people who want software out of the 3rd-party repo but don't
want core packages replaced get to have their cake and eat it too, and
3rd-party repositories don't get bashed as much. Everybody wins, no?
Of course, someone within Red Hat would probably have to step up as 3rd-party
repository liaison to coordinate the effort... But I think its something
worth doing, for the sake of the Fedora community at large.
--
Jarod Wilson
jarod(a)wilsonet.com