Re: Question about the new 3rd party software policy and standardization across the distro

On Sat, Sep 24, 2016 at 11:50 AM, Stephen John Smoogen <smooge@gmail.com> wrote:

It isn't considered a problem for a couple of reasons:

1) Editions are not meant to be combined so they are in many ways
'mutually' exclusive at least at the 'top' level. Yes the packages are
built from the same builders but it is meant that package choices or
lifetimes could be different.

Sure, but currently, it seems to be the case that if I sit down at, say, a Fedora Server or Fedora Workstation system and install some piece of software, it will install in "the same way". By this I don't so much mean packaging format, but in terms of compile time options enabled, optional dependencies installed, etc. Is this something that is no longer considered desirable?

 

2) The 3rd party software is not installed from the Fedora media but
is up to the person who chose it to install. And people are already
doing this sort of crazy combinations now. People wander onto various
help places daily saying "I just enabled repo X and repo Y and now I
can't do Z". All the groups are doing is trying to cut that down to a
smaller number by curating a couple of known ones.

Sure, and I think that is admirable. But I guess I'm approaching this from the view of someone who has not productized (editionized?) most of his Fedora installations, because they were installed before Fedora 21 and I chose not to do so when upgrading. If this is a per-edition thing, how would I enable officially sanctioned third-party software repositories? Or what if I'm running a desktop spin that chooses not to ship any of, say, Workstation's 3rd party repositories for whatever reason? Presumably, there would be some way for me pick and choose them despite not having an editionized installation.

Yes, there are already compatibility issues with the existing set of third party repositories. And we can't avoid it if an officially sanctioned repository wants to conflict with an unsanctioned repository. But shouldn't we be able to ensure that all officially sanctioned repositories play nicely together on the same system? Maybe this doesn't require oversight by an "independent" body and just requires a strong set of guidelines mandating compatibility (or at least mandating that incompatibility be documented when it's discovered), but this seems like a potential problem that *could* be avoided entirely. Admittedly, it's primarily an issue for people who aren't running 100% editionized Fedora, but (as such a person) I think this is a usage case worth considering.

Maybe in practice these issues will never crop up because the kind of (third party) software that Workstation wants to curate doesn't overlap with Server (for example), though.

Ben Rosser