On Tue, 2004-08-03 at 20:08, Michael Schwendt wrote:
On Tue, 03 Aug 2004 17:12:10 +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
Some examples:
- In some cases such "known bugs" prevent Fedora Extras to supply
packages for downstream releases, because the officially released packages the Fedora Extras packages are based on are broken.
E.g. "missing shared libs in ghostview" http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=88175 break gsview for FC1 https://bugzilla.fedora.us/show_bug.cgi?id=1940
Though, in this case the extra package should not have been released for FC1. The explicit dependency on a shared library soname should not have passed QA for FC1.
ACK, in this case, FE's QA has failed.
Nevertheless, it has revealed a known problem ("CLOSED RAWHIDE") in FC1's ghostscript, on which the RH packager formerly had decided that it were not important enough to the public to justify a public update.
IMO, both are separate problems: * The former is a failure that should not have happened, however such failures are inevitable and for sure will happen again. Here, FE is challenged to improve it's QA.
* The latter is a different kind of problem: - Individual perception of the "importance on a bug" is subjective. - "Importance of a bug" is subject to change over time.
Before FE, there basically were 2 parties: RH + individual users. RH could afford to close bugs "CLOSED RAWHIDE" when a bug did not affect the "masses", while individual users having been affected by such a bug could individually pickup "unofficial fixes" from upstream/rawhide.
With FE, the situation has changed: There now are 3 parties: RH/FC + FE + individual users.
1) One can argue that FE is just another arbitrary "individual user". OK, no problem at all. Then FE has to be allowed to apply the work-around individual users had to apply before FE: Replace packages from FC by packages from upstream/rawhide. => FE's policy has to be changed
2) FE is a privileged "3rd party" closely interacting with RH/FC. In this case FE has to be enabled to influence decisions having been taken by RH/FC. => RH/FC has to implement formal means for FE to do so.
Another approach would be FE to ignore such problems and not to try working around such bugs. => FE can not provide any packages that are affected by such bugs.
IMO, it would be best if RH/FC would prefer not to close bugs as "CLOSED RAWHIDE" when ever reasonable/applicable and to officially upgrade the package instead. Alternatively, it could also be worth to consider handing over such a package to "Fedora Extra" for "interim band-aid packages".
No. That would make it a Fedora Core bug-fix update and would not be an extra package. Updates to Fedora Core must not be released in Fedora Extras.
That's fedora.us's current policy. I feel excluding changes in FE's policy at this point in time would be a mistake (cf. above).
Having read Michael Tiemann's draft and struggling with "CLOSED RAWHIDE" bugs as a contributor to FE (and as an "ordinary user"), I see a need for changes in both FC's and FE's policies.
Ralf