[Mageia-dev] RPM5 AND MAGEIA

Tue Mar 8 22:11:11 CET 2011

2011/3/2 Dexter Morgan <dmorganec at gmail.com>:
+> On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 4:21 PM, devzero2000 <devzero2000 at rpm5.org> wrote:
+>> Hi to Mageia
+>>
+>> I am part of rpm5 (but I follow rpm from more than 10 years) and
+>> recently I did join Mageia, although I almost always used for work
+>> other distros and OS (AIX, SVR4) that I also deal with Mandriva and
+>> security (CEH) https: / /
+>> www.redhat.com/wapps/training/certification/verify.html?certNumber=805007215126804&verify=Verify
+>>
+>>
+>> Apart from the rest - of which i will ask for sponsorship when it will
+>> be - I wanted to know if there are plans to move to rpm5 by Mageia,
+>> such as Mandriva has been doing lately. Rpm5 already has a builtbot
+>> with Magela and rpm5. I can, if you can think useful or have plan for
+>> this, lay the necessary modification to enter into rpm5 Mageia, with
+>> the features of Mandriva cooker - fingerprint, syslog, etc. without
+>> trademark ecc- and produce a first rpm rpm5 for mageia , which also
+>> contains the functionality required by the passage to the "RPM
+>> ACID " feauture (berkeley db conversion)
+>>
+>>
+>> is there interest? Then if someone wants to directly participate in
+>> rpm5 I think that there should also be no problem.
+Exactly, opposed to rpm.org upstream which only has a few redhat employees
+working on it with no public communication, coordination and discussions between
+distributions, rpm5 is community driven and has the active involvement
+and more open participation from several vendors/distributions on different
+platforms..
+
+Your (Mageia;) participation is more than welcome and active direct involvement
+in upstream development is generally no problem at all in arranging. :)
+>>
+>> Opinions ?
+>>
+>> TIA
+>>
+>> Regards
+>>
+> Hi,
+>
+> Please read the archives we already talked about this several times on the ML.
+I saw several people talking and asking about rpm5 on both mageia-discuss@
+& mageia-dev@ list, I even myself (and also relayed Jeff's) offered to maintain
+and provide any help you'd accepted on it for Mageia a couple of ties without
+any response. I saw several people asking semi-frequently asking about it on
+different occations since, but without any actual discussions considering the
+topic taking place.
+I can only recall seeing one post from Thierry to mageia-devel@ where he
+made a suggestion for rpm.org, but never saw anything about it since before
+the upgrade to newer rpm.org version was done by someone I'd never seen
+the name of before except for a fictional character on a TV series probably
+totally unrelated(?;) and even much less so ever saw participating in any
+of the discussions concerning it previously.
+
+But I only follow these two lists, there might be other lists I don't know of
+(ie. communication around cooker tends to go across and between
+maintainers at mandriva.com (that a lot of people don't even know of) and
+cooker@ lists, and then also at some various other internal lists at Mandriva
+that's restricted, so for all that I know the discussion could've taken place
+somewhere that I might not even expect to be open for me;) and where the
+actual discussion took place. I dunno, do you have any references to the
+discussion? I'm usually quite interested and curious about such discussions
+in general. :)
+>
+> We are using rpm.org for now, and we are happy with this, we are
+> already working with rpm.org teams and this works pretty nice.
+Telling that you're "already working with rpm.org" and being able to comment
+about the experience less than a day after making first post to rpm-maint list
+introducing yourself and Mageia seems a bit premature to me, but it might
+be a cultural thing.. ;p </troll>
+>
+> But you can go and help mandriva as they have several problems with rpm5.
+Yes, and we're even actually aware of these ourself (*coughcough*;), currently
+none of those (reported) is of particularly significant size or causing major
+headaches to people in general for a little while now though. There's still
+some few issues left that *must* be worked out in time for 2011.0 none the
+less though. The number of other issues, room for improvements, planned
+features, cleanups, ideas and what not otherwise is rather long and rather
+non-finite and not likely to ever be finished and really "done" with,
+but at least
+I can say that it's significantly shorter now after changing to new rpm version
+with a lot of the more long-time work already done in it before switching. :)
+
+I'm more than willing to accept (and provide) any help, interest and discuss
+any details concerning rpm, regardless of distro and rpm version/fork, be
+it related to any of current issues affecting distro, other things I have on my
+TODO list, or other aspects and focus independent of these. I'm very open to
+try my best to scale and allow for others that have the interest and skills to
+discuss and contribute, either directly or indirectly!
+>
+> In addition, rpm5 ( i hate this name as this makes think rpm5 is a new
+> version of rpm which isn't true ) is just another rpm and i think that
+> this is better to stay compatible with the most distributions (
+> fedora, opensuse, ... ) instead of using rpm5.
+You claim for it to be old?
+And by what is your definition to "stay compatible" with most distributions?
+Are you referring to different distributions doing releases,
+or compatibility between individual releases of the specific distributions?
+
+For compatibility between different distributions, the only
+distribution actively
+involved with actual upstream development of rpm.org is Fedora, with
+complaints heard from others on despite it being over a year since Fedora
+& OpenSuSE had their RPM Summit (which "only" covered rather "smaller"
+issues concerning packaging policies than involvement and active
+participation in
+upstream development), nothing has been heard between the two since..
+
+The amount of changes from upstream carried in OpenSuSE's rpm was
+quite huge and making incompatibilities between the two bigger than between
+ie. rpm.org & rpm5.org, with the situation not changing much since from last
+I heard.. And considering that I've fully reviewed and merged all patches in
+Mandriva dating all the way back to 1999 in rpm5 upstream along with a lot
+of practices, macros, scripts etc. as well in both directions, level of
+"compatibility" between Mageia & rpm5 is far greater than any other (with
+other rpm5 based distros being more compatible with Mageia than Mageia
+is with non-rpm5 based distros as well;)..
+
+Even between individual releases from the individual rpm forks there are
+always similarly incompatibilities often happening and impossible to get
+around while keeping full "compatibility" intact.
+For the upgrade in cooker to rpm 5.3 there was two bigger changes happening,
+the first one being the rpmdb changes requiring a conversion to take place,
+this was inconvenient but a proper and safe procedure to achieve it
+was mostly worked out before hitting main/release, with the rest of it
+pretty much fully perfected since (with support for conversion back and
+forth added as well to achieve "compatibility"), making this issue only
+temporary and not really of much concern outside of that limited period
+(except for when upgrading from cooker to Mageia, I've again given
+pointers, suggestions, specific directions and even offered to provide
+help on doing it, but as usual and to little surprise, interest was close
+to zero..).
+
+The second issue causing bigger incompatibility issues and pains is the
+new distepoch tag I've introduced in Mandriva and that we're the first
+real adopters of (it's not even yet officially supported upstream).
+This is more of a particular feature implemented by myself rather than
+so much related to the specific rpm version beyond the rpm version
+I used to implement it in first (I have it on my TODO to port to rpm.org
+later and has discussed it with positive interest from upstream of in the
+past as well btw. ;), and also causing greater incompatibilities and
+headaches between tools and the packages built for the specific
+distribution. Worst issues has been worked out for this one as well with
+various related fixes to deal with incompatibility being ported back to
+stable releases along with some some other unrelated fixes as well
+(if interested, you'll find the 3.37.2 branch of perl-URPM in mandriva svn,
+which except for the fixes mentioned is basically identical to your 3.38
+inn Mageia).
+
+These are anyways not issues impossible to manage, and much of
+the intent behind distepoch, ironically enough, is rather to improve
+future compatibility with other distributions by moving distro specific
+stuff out of the src.rpm. ;)
+You'll always keep run into these issues, neither direction attempted will
+free you from ever running into them now or in the future.
+If you really wanna discuss "compatibility", you *really* need to define
+what is even somewhat implied by this as *compatibility* isn't something
+you'll be able to achieve nor anyone else really has that much interest
+in chasing..
+
+I honestly don't even expect you to read on and all the way down to even
+here to begin with. If you do, good, it's one step in the right direction, if
+not and not really grasping these issues, you're doomed at even
+attempt starting to begin with. :p
+
+So first of all and most important to begin with is how you yourself wants
+to deal with the particular issues for your distribution, how to efficiently
+solve your own individual problems to  begin with, how to improve things
+to make life for anyone involved in maintaining the distribution currently
+easier.
+Then you can start think about "compatibility", first of all between your own
+individual releases and tools (independent of upstream) to begin with and
+concern yourself on really solving things the "right way".
+Then on you can finally start putting thought into "compatibility" beyond
+own distribution, how to best achieve it, both on your and others' end.
+With different tools in use and development, one true answer and solution
+cannot easily or even always found at all, and the debate about what being
+upstream or not, what's limited to your own distro only or not and what not
+gets murkey and the choice needs to be done from not so much based on
+which fork (or even tools to use) comes from who or what or anything, but
+rather based on what's most feasible to you & maintenance, to what extent
+gains in return you expect, existing involvement, knowledge, insight and
+actual skills on achieving the goals set.
+And uhm, yeah.. In the end it gets complex and not strictly just about
+making a simple choice expecting great results in return from that alone
+and sticking to it..
+
+Tsktsk, my post probably ends up being labelled as flamebait, troll, too long
+and boring, biased and what not.. I just felt like giving what was intended
+as a somewhat brief answer in response to a lot of nonsense and FUD
+(mainly built on ignorance and power of suggesion), and also from greater
+interest in the particular topic you bring up, but turned into a longer
+semi-rant(without even straightening out half of what I intended;) though.
+Appologies given upfront!
+
+So I'll try avoid getting deeper into further details. :p
+
+Again, main point is that there's more to it than anything I've seen trace
+of being discussed or anywhere related to what you say you'd like to
+achieve. As "not following mandriva, maintain everything alone, follow rpm.org"
+doesn't really answer it much, but rather raises more questions and concerns
+over how you intend to succeed (but I honestly don't know you at all,
+so you might be full of nice surprises:) and with whom.
+I'd be happy to try help the best and be able to make life easier for everyone,
+and I'm more interested in this than on what specific distro nor rpm fork
+you're using, just as I'm convinced and sure the importance lies much
+more in "how to" rather than in "how you're not".
+
+
+"Compatibility" between the two different rpm forks solely alone on their
+own independent of distributions is rather trivial to achieve (and usually
+already done by both upstreams) and honestly not that big of an issue,
+as for how to deal with differences between the individual distributions
+gets far more complex again..
+
+It's a topic I'm actually doing parts of my thesis around, so if you have
+any specific thoughts, ideas, meanings, questions etc. I'd be very
+interested, and very happy if finding interest in discussing and working
+together with others on. :)
+>
+> This is just my opinion but i would like to not see rpm5 thread again
+> and again, that start for my part to become boring.
+If you keep seeing it again and again, maybe it suggests that the
+discussion never (sufficiently) took place to begin with and an actual
+consensus known to everyone and what based on might be missing
+in order to reach any finality on the topic? ;)
+
+I've only seen threads with questions and quite superficial discussions
+not really answering many of them, but it might be my personal
+bias affecting critical sense and standards too much.. :p
+
+Oh well, tried my best being constructive and genuinly helpful,
+expecting nothing, but would be positively surprised and happy for
+any serious discussion and interest, if discovered!
+
+Need some sleep to achieve greater consistency, focus and coherency..
+--
+Regards,
+Per Øyvind
+