[Mageia-dev] Update of backport, policy proposal

atilla ontas tarakbumba at gmail.com
Sun Jun 26 10:58:04 CEST 2011


2011/6/26 Wolfgang Bornath <molch.b at googlemail.com>:
> A short reality check from userside:
>
> If foo-1.0 is in Mageia 1 and foo-1.1 is released upstream
>  - foo-1.1 will likely be integrated in Cauldron very soon after
>  - users will request to have foo-1.1 in Mageia 1
>  - if Mageia will not provide it then there will soon be local
> repositories where local packagers will do a "backport" for their
> friends.
>
> This may not be what Mageia backport policy will allow but we can not
> avoid people doing and using this, no matter how many warning signs we
> will publish. This has to be taken into account here.
>
> When a policy is found it has to be communicated very well, especially
> if that policy means that the user can not have foo-1.1 in his stable
> Mageia 1.
>
> This is important because former Mandriva users were used to get
> almost all new versions backported, if not officially then in 3rd
> party repos like MIB or MUD.
>
> --
> wobo
>
Hi. I'm following this threat from the very beginning. While reading,
i feel i'm reading a Mandriva Cooker mailing list posts. As a
community distro, why Mageia developers still think like a Mandriva
employee? Why backports and why so many policies, like a commercial
enterprise distro? I mean, Mageia do not have paid developers to work
on packages all the time. Also Mageia do not have so many packagers
like Fedora or Ubuntu, So, why make so many things so hard?

As wobo mentioned, people like latest and greatest software. I think,
except a few users will use unofficial 3rd party repos to get latest
software. While i was maintaining MVT (Mandriva Turkiye) repository,
our users asked for GNOME 2.32 while Mandriva have GNOME 2.30 on
official release.

Personally i always hate the backports structure and policy. It
confuses minds. Why Mageia need a backports repo, i really do not
understand. Stability and bug free releases are of course a must. But
it needs developers dedicated to work, almost paid developers. If a
software do not related with core system, like vlc, it should included
updates repo. Let upstream fix bugs and security issues. If a packager
catchs a bug he should send a patch to upstream and wait for a new
release. Otherwise, it is not packaging it is coding, which many
potential packgers will avoid to contribute.

Look at Debian and Arch Linux who haven't any paid developers but
community distros. Stable Debian releases provide software from a
century ago for the sake of stability. Arch provides latest software
including core system and occaionally have breakages. I think Mageia
should be between two of them. Release latest software in updates for
non core system and libs, keep core system stable. Remove this
backports thingy.

My 2 cents...


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