Re: Where to put spec files...

[Chris Chabot <chabotc reviewboard com>]

> [...] Works. But that's about it. Replacing old packages with RH-style packages
> won't work (not in the simple case that is)
>
> Suppose you have gtkhtml:
> Mandrake has gtkhtml, libgtkhtmlx, and libgtkhtml-devel (I may be off a bit,
> but you get the idea)
> RH-style has gtkhtml and gtkhtml-devel. Thus upgrading to these packages
> will cuase a conflict between gtkhtml and libgtkhtmlx, and between
> gtkhtml-devel and libgtkhtml-devel. So you'ld have to uninstall those first,
> screwing up your database.
From what i know, a lot of package names in mandrake are still quite 
compatible.. (this also since they want to be compatible with binary 
distributions of oracle, ibm-db2, etc..). Also, if they started using 
'random' names for packages, we would have a seperate problem .. ie, if 
a user finds a bug in 'libgtkhtmlx', what component in bugzilla does he 
use ? Libgtkhtml? (aka gtkhtml2 in cvs) or gtkhtml ? (aka gtkhtml 1.4 
edition).

Now what if they decide to rename gcc to xxc and our build scripts fail?

In other words, once you start adjusting your baseline for these 
(posible, not yet confirmed) 'incidents', you start down a slippery road 
that leads to a very high maintanance and very confusing situation.

Also, since no distrobution has gnome2 packages in them yet (well, some 
beta ones maybe in redhat 7.x, which i put in the 'Obsoletes' fields of 
the .spec files i recently made), if we offer them a good vendor neutral 
standard to follow, i am sure they wont have a problem with that.

Ofcource the higher goal for any distrobution is to make sure the user 
only uses the quality assured distro packages, however if a user wants 
to use bleeding-edge packages, he should be able to do so, without 
severey breaking his system. (which would lead to greater problems 
obviously)

I'd say, lets make our own naming convention (ie 
"base_package_name-major.minor.sub.RPKFORMAT", and use the redhat / 
gnome style naming for our libraries (gconf2, gnome-vfs2, etc) This way 
we are compatible with the highest percentage of people, and have a 
clear standard to submit to SuSe & mandrakem which do not have to break 
their old releases and base system designs.

Ofcource this will only work if we as the GPP all agree on it, and make 
sure gnome follows the standards we set ;-)

   -- Chris