[Mageia-dev] Mageia repository sections, licenses, restrictions, firmware etc

[Samuel Verschelde]

Le mercredi 13 octobre 2010 20:22:01, Michael Scherer a écrit :
> 
> Le mardi 12 octobre 2010 à 18:02 +0300, Anssi Hannula a écrit :
> > Hi all!
> > 
> > Do people have any thoughts on what kind of repository/media sectioning we 
> > should use on Mageia, and what should those sections contain?
> > 
> > Note that I won't talk about backports / private repositories in this post, 
> > only about the basic sectioning and packages in those.
> > 
> > Some points to consider (I've written my opinion in ones where I have one):
> > 
> > == Do we want a separated core repository?
> > 
> > No separated core: Fedora, Debian, Opensuse
> > Separated core: Mandriva (main), Ubuntu (main), Arch (Core)
> 
> How do we decide what would be in core ?

I don't know exactly, however I'd like we clearly separate officially supported packages from the others.

Some people will tell me "what's the difference, we are a community distro now", but I think we still have to clearly say what packages we give :
- guaranteed security updates
- guaranteed bugfix updates for important bugs
- (If some parts of my proposal at http://mageia.org/wiki/doku.php?id=rollingdebate are kept) supported backports (for the most-wanted packages)

There may be a QA Coordination Team which would help choose which packages are in main/core and which are in extra, along with the other teams and maybe user votes.

Main : packages which have a regular maintainer or maintainer team. If you install them, you know you can trust the team to maintain it properly.

Contrib/extra : other packages.

In a perfect world, with infinite man power, everything would be in "main" and there would be no "extra". However in our real world, we have to decide which packages are guaranteed (main) and which ones are outside QA Team responsibility. One of our goals will be to increase the perimeter of "main", when we get more contributers.

Another difference : as in Mandriva, there would be stricter rules about package updates in main than in contrib/extra. This is important to help provide high quality packages and updates in main.

If there is a clearly defined set of supported packages, with a support policy I can trust, then I can recommend Mageia for server use and corporate workstation use. If we meld everything in one big bag of packages, I can only fear for the distribution's quality.

However, I don't know if there has to be separate media or any other *clear* way to differentiate supported packages from extra packages.

Best regards

Samuel Verschelde