[Mageia-dev] About panotools patent problem (and other problematic rpms)

[Maarten Vanraes]

Op dinsdag 22 februari 2011 19:09:17 schreef andre999:
> Maarten Vanraes a écrit :
> > Op vrijdag 18 februari 2011 14:42:02 schreef Michael Scherer:
> >> Le vendredi 18 février 2011 à 12:47 +0000, James Kerr a écrit :
> >>> If there are two packages, one in core and another in tainted, then
> >>> doesn't urpmi need a way to recognise that the tainted package is newer
> >>> than (an update to) the corresponding core package? I believe that this
> >>> is achieved in Mandriva, because plf is greater than mdv.
> >> 
> >> That's abusing release tag and it work by pure chance ( ie, had the plf
> >> decided to  be called the guillomovitch liberation front, it would not
> >> have worked ). And this is quite inflexible, since people will always
> >> have plf packages, leading to users adding some rpm in skip.list with a
> >> regexp.
> >> 
> >> This doesn't make much sense to treat tainted rpm as update to core,
> >> this is not the same notion. But we cannot express this in urpmi for the
> >> moment, as this would requires some way to say "if you need to install
> >> something, prefer this source rather than this one".
> >> 
> >> We can imagine a priority system, or we can simply say that if there is
> >> the same rpm on 2 media, we ask to the user ( except this would requires
> >> IMHO a better system than the current path based one to see what is in a
> >> rpm, but that's a rather long proposal to make ).
> >> 
> >> But you are right this another set of issues to solve for dual life
> >> packages.
> > 
> > after sleeping on this, i've had this idea:
> > 
> > why don't we rename packages in tainted?
> > keeping them in the same name, perhaps has issues with search engines,
> > (ie: which version do you get?)
> > 
> > i proposed renaming packages in tainted,(but not the release tag).
> > 
> > would it be a good compromise if we named packages:
> > 
> > <orig_packagename>-tainted-<version>-<release>  ?
> > 
> > the benefit of this could be adding an Obsoletes and Provides on the
> > original package with the identical version.
> > 
> > for building, i may have this solution:
> > 
> > %tainted(%_optional_feature1 %optional_feature2 %optional_feature3)
> > 
> > this would allow the buildbot to look for %tainted  and if it does, it
> > could rebuild it for tainted and add the particulars itself. this would
> > simplify the whole plf/tainted thing easily. and since all 4 rpms are
> > being built at the same time, you have no srpm problem either.
> > 
> > WDYT?
> 
> <aside>
> First of all, "tainted" in English implies that the software doesn't
> work.  (Unless it refers to food, in which case it means "poisonous".)
> So we should choose a more appropriate name, such as "constrained", or
> use the Ubuntu approach and use a name which doesn't literally describe
> the contents. ("Multiverse", in their case.)
> Anything but something that implies that there is something inherently
> wrong with the package in question.
> That was one advantage of "plf", but of course that is already taken.
> And it is certainly advantageous to include such packages directly on
> Mageia mirrors.
> </aside>
> 
> A Cleaner approach -- albeit more work -- would be for the "constrained"
> package to be an external module which adds the missing functionality.
> For less modular packages, this would be replacing (only) the files
> which provide the questioned functionality.
> For a typical a music player-type application, this would be only a be a
> few relatively small files.
> 
> So a user that wants to add the "contrained" functionality would simply
> add an extra package, which obviously would have a different name based
> on the main package.
> (It would be useful to suggest adding such packages during installation,
> if the "contrained" repositories are selected.)
> (That is, if such a related package is available in selected repos.)
> 
> Think of the gstreamer packages -- the "ugly" perhaps corresponding to
> the "constrained" packages being considered.
> 
> my 2 cents :)

sure, but that doesn't always work, not all software is done like this