[Mageia-dev] Minimal patching vs. fixing the whole Universe

Wed Jun 22 23:34:12 CEST 2011

Op woensdag 22 juni 2011 22:47:40 schreef Radu-Cristian FOTESCU:
+> I would say that the general principle should be to apply a _minimal_
+> patching, not to try to rewrite the work of the developers of hundreds of
+> packages!
+> 
+> A distro's job is not to judge the work of the _upstream_ developers as
+> long as this is not a real bug.
+> 
+> "Should" Mageia try to "fix" something that is not actually broken? There
+> might be hundreds of packages with thousands and thousands of questionable
+> decisions taken by the upstream developers -- however, why fixing
+> something that works?
+> 
+> You see, I hate conflicts (although I seem to be a maestro in generating
+> them), but I also need simplicity and clear policies. Also, policies that
+> can be applied. "Perfect" policies that would require the revision of
+> hundreds of packages that actually work are not my cup of tea.
+> 
+> Of course, I am _not_ a Mageia packager and this is not "my" package, but
+> I'd like to know Mageia's policy wrt building packages. Normally, patches
+> are not meant to optimize but to fix breakages. If the packagers are
+> compelled to "improve" upstream's work, this can prove to be catastrophic
+> in complex cases.
+> 
+> 
+> Thank you,
+> R-C aka beranger
+
+
+imho, it's something like: "as long as you're patching it anyway, make it 
+python and possibly add a conflicts with python >= 3.0" or something.
+
+besides, by the time we'll actually have python3, it's likely that the 
+upstream will already have been ported to python3... or the buildsystem would 
+fail anyway...
+