[Mageia-dev] Missing packages in Mageia 1. How to backport?

Fri Jun 10 12:44:06 CEST 2011

'Twas brillig, and Michael Scherer at 10/06/11 11:27 did gyre and gimble:
+> Le jeudi 09 juin 2011 à 10:14 +0100, Colin Guthrie a écrit :
+>> Hi,
+>>
+>> As I upgrade my various machines (I only really have about 5, so not
+>> that many) I'm running into a few packages that are missing (this is
+>> inevitable).
+>>
+>> Nothing major just little things like trac and supybot etc.
+>>
+>> What is the best way to add these packages to the v1 tree?
+>>
+>> Using backports seems a little odd as this is "unsupported" and we don't
+>> really want to encourage using it as a means to get the missing packages.
+> 
+> If we do not want to have people use backports, we wouldn't have added
+> it in the first place.
+> 
+> I do think backport is perfectly suited for that.
+
+So the user that just wants to install supybot has to expose themselves
+to the risk of updating to a backported version of gnome or KDE.... this
+is hardly ideal. Especially for novice users.
+
+>> release is obviously frozen so no go there.
+>>
+>> The only real option is updates, but that should obviously have some QA
+>> on it.
+> 
+> Updates is not for new version of software, not for new softwares. And
+> backporting something from cauldron is not a update.
+
+This seems like a strange statement as */updates on mdv was allowed to
+have new packages in some cases (I've done it before, although I think
+only for * == contrib), so I don't see why we have to restrict this
+possibility in Mageia.
+
+>> Perhaps we need to have some kind of exemption to get these missing
+>> packages added?
+>>
+>> Does anyone have any opinions on this?
+> 
+> Yes, I do.
+> 
+> We have used backports in the past for that, and I see no reason to
+> change that.
+
+This is fine in the regular course of distro evolution, but here we're
+talking about users migrating from Mdv to Mga and finding "stale" Mdv
+packages still installed on their system when they want (and we want to
+provide) a Mageia version. This is very much a special case for this
+transitional period but I feel it's an important one, particularly
+*because* it's the first release.
+
+I think you're thinking in absolute terms rather than transitional
+terms. In absolute terms I agree with you on principle, but I think we
+need to deal with transitional issues gracefully and not treat them as
+second class considerations.
+
+> If the problem is that backports were too buggy in the past, then we
+> should fix backports process, not bypassing them.
+
+I don't think this is particularly relevant. Backports are unsupported
+generally. That's a given. If we encourage people to enable backports to
+get missing packages (this is very distinct and separate from the
+unsupported backports).
+
+> And if we start by pushing new version in update, people will soon
+> wonder why the new version of X is in updates, while the new version of
+> Y is not, just because we didn't have X in release and Y was there.
+
+I very much consider "nothing -> version X" quite different from
+"version X -> version Y". I don't think it's a hard concept for anyone
+to grasp.
+
+Col
+
+
+-- 
+
+Colin Guthrie
+mageia(at)colin.guthr.ie
+http://colin.guthr.ie/
+
+Day Job:
+  Tribalogic Limited [http://www.tribalogic.net/]
+Open Source:
+  Mageia Contributor [http://www.mageia.org/]
+  PulseAudio Hacker [http://www.pulseaudio.org/]
+  Trac Hacker [http://trac.edgewall.org/]
+