Packaging third-party applications (Was: Meta Toolchain Release (2008 May))

Andy Green andy at openmoko.com
Wed Jun 4 08:49:16 CEST 2008


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Somebody in the thread at some point said:

| in a main repository?  In Fedora, the multitude of repositories for
| downloading packages has caused nightmares of "dependency hell" when
| users install from two or more repos that carry some of the same package.
|
| The most user-friendly solution is one location that holds all the apps
| a user could want, one place for them to look, one place to maintain.
| Branching repositories should be avoided as much as possible.
|
| Submitting packages to OE is like contributing upstream.  It makes the
| most out of your contribution.

Yeah I know what you are talking about exactly.

In fact it is OK if apps are in multiple repos so long as they are
linked entirely against canonical dependent packages from central
distribution.  The damage came when you had say mplayer from freshrpms
and livna that each required and imported say faad from their respective
repositories.

Then if you wanted xine from a different place you got mplayer, the Hell
appeared because faad dependency in xine could either be satisfied by
the foreign package of different patchlevel than the one from the same
place as the Xine, or worse could not be satisfied due to use of =
version dependency when the two repos' faad were at different versions.

Of course it becomes political then what gets into the central
distribution with what config options, as happened with Fedora rafts of
dependent packages were landgrabbed into Extras as the de-facto
canonical source of them and the independent guys felt treated badly
about having that taken away from them rather brusquely.  In addition
people were and still are grumpy about the pretty intense packaging
rules and "bureaucracy" surrounding "submission" of packages and
"approval", although since as a Fedora user I benefit from the high
level of engineering and consistency I find it hard to argue against it.

- -Andy
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Fedora - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iEYEARECAAYFAkhGOuwACgkQOjLpvpq7dMq2GQCeI9+3ZV3kn5nrmwDaHKJi4gG0
cM8Anj0U1lFpaM32+W4UuJLcM30kONzI
=1GZi
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----



More information about the openmoko-devel mailing list