Hi.

...

Also, are there some guidelines/policies to standarize the behaviour of packages in OpenSuSE?

http://forge.novell.com/modules/xfref_library/detail.php?tab=doc&reference_id=1544&group=1367

Thanks! I'll take a look.

...

Could someone please point out where can I find a document describing the steps I need to follow in order to build a package

http://www.opensuse.org/SUSE_Build_Tutorial

Thanks for that URL too. I've briefly looked at it and it seems to only explain how to build the RPM packages. What I'm looking for is a guide explaining the procedures that I need to follow in order to get my packages (the RPMs I build following the steps in SUSE_Build_Tutorial) to become part of OpenSUSE (instead of third-party packages). What do I need to do in order for my packages to become part of OpenSUSE (e.g. distributed in the OpenSUSE ISO files, listed in the official package listings, etc.)? We are interested in creating a centralized repository of packaged software following some guidelines/policies to integrate properly, right? Thanks! :) Alejo. http://azul.freaks-unidos.net/ ---=( Comunidad de Usuarios de Software Libre en Colombia )=--- ---=( http://bachue.com/colibri )=--=( colibri@bachue.com )=---

On Fri, 9 Sep 2005, Pascal Bleser wrote: [...]

Note that we're currently more or less waiting for the SUSE staff to release 10.0 final to have them actively involved into that topic. Let's just give them some time to concentrate on giving us the best SUSE Linux that has ever been ;)

Pascal, great point! ;) Regards Christoph

...

We are interested in creating a centralized repository of packaged software following some guidelines/policies to integrate properly, right?

Yes, I guess we all agree! For now I'd just like to point out one thing: Please drop the idea of one centralized distribution that everyone is trying to get changes / packages in. I know that this sound very strange at first, but it will be fundamental for the future success of openSUSE!

Hmm, I'm not sure I follow you. Why should we drop this idea? And why is droping it fundamental for the future success of OpenSUSE? Isn't this, to allow participation from everyone in building SuSE (in, among others, the form of changes / packages), the point of OpenSUSE? Confused, Alejo. http://azul.freaks-unidos.net/ ---=( Comunidad de Usuarios de Software Libre en Colombia )=--- ---=( http://bachue.com/colibri )=--=( colibri@bachue.com )=---

I guess people haven't yet figured it out that is the other way around from what they expect. Novell/SUSE has opened SUSE Linux for you to do whatever you want with it for yourself. This means you have access to that technology for your playground... It doesn't mean that you can move your playground inside Novell/SUSE... It means you can take OpenSUSE and create your own SUSE Linux, but not enforce your personal wishes and desires upon Novell/SUSE... If the Novell/SUSE guys think any of your proposals make sense and your packages are worth inserting in the professional distros, they will do so... Until then, the toys are yours to play with... just don't force Novell/SUSE to like your toys :) they are definitely looking at them, if that's your concern... Daniel Robert Schiele wrote:

On Fri, Sep 09, 2005 at 10:51:11AM -0500, Alejandro Forero Cuervo wrote:

...

Isn't this, to allow participation from everyone in building SuSE (in, among others, the form of changes / packages), the point of OpenSUSE?

It is to allow everybody to build everything he wants _using_ SUSE and (if he likes) sharing this with others.

If you have a centralized approach everything that will happen is that everybody tries to push his pet project into the "official" SUSE resulting in a 423 ISOs distribution with terabytes of stuff nobody actually needs.

Robert

I've been reading most of the thread on package creation and trust and I still think we should be considering a different approach of allowing direct involvement and participation of third parties on the construction of OpenSUSE. I believe having a lot of packages (without allowing redundant packages) would be good, even if some of them are not as properly maintained as they could be. I would rather have 3 ISOs of very properly maintained software + 4 ISOs of averagely maintained packages + 4 ISOs of sparringly maintained software than just 3 ISOs of very properly maintained software. I feel that allowing relatively unused packages into the distribution would be benefical, at least better than not including them at all. I don't see any reasons why the quality of the "3 ISOs of very properly maintained software" would diminish by allowing the rest of the packages into the distribution. In this case, if a package is poorly maintained, anyone should be allowed to contribute and help improve its quality. Oh, and we could use tools similar to Debian's popularity contest to decide how to place our RPMs in our ISOs (probably marking the less important ISOs as "additional" or "optional"). Certainly, I'm not advocating letting anyone put up random crap and making it part of the distribution! I think there are many alternatives less extreme than the "Novell remains in control" approach. Althoug I use SLES, SUSE Pro and NLD almost every day, I've been a long time Debian user: my perception is that most of their packages are of *very* *good* quality (it should be said that I have very little familiarity with Fedora). In their case, allowing anyone to create packages that are official part of the distribution has most certainly not decreased their overall quality. In my case I would package the Chicken Scheme compiler (along with many extensions) and the Ion window manager. Sure, they are relatively unpopular, but having them part of the distribution would surely make the life of those who depend on them easier. With the current approach, I can't see any reasons why third-party developers would prefer to participate in (i.e. create packages for, promote, etc.) OpenSuSE rather than a distribution such as Debian, where they can become directly involved (as long as the specified procedures are followed). The reason I ask this is because, being a Novell employee, I am genuinously concerned with the future of OpenSUSE and I think its chances of success would be greater with a different approach. I know most of the Novell guys at SuSE are currently occupied with getting the 10.0 release out, but I find this issue far more important. It's a shame I couldn't jump into the discussion earlier. Thanks. Alejo. http://azul.freaks-unidos.net/ ---=( Comunidad de Usuarios de Software Libre en Colombia )=--- ---=( http://bachue.com/colibri )=--=( colibri@bachue.com )=---

As far as I'm concerned, the quality of the packages is a direct reflection on Novell/SUSE. If there are broken or low low quality packages, it will reflect poorly on Novell/SUSE.

Now, if you are simply talking about making a repository of packages available (but not on the official DVD/CD's I buy from SUSE), then that's a different matter, but if it's in the boxed set I buy, SUSE is 100% responsible in my mind. I don't think it would be a good business decision to allow any low quality items into the official distro.

I fail to see how having an additional set of CDs, marked as "additional" or "optional" would hurt you: you'd get exactly the same CDs, with exactly the same quality, plus an additional set of "optional" or "additional" CDs with additional packages. Just in case you got the right idea, I am in no way advocating that broken / low low quality packages into SuSE! As I said, I am advocating alternatives that would get us plently of relatively good-quality packages in the distribution. Broken or low low quality packages should be removed. As I said, the "only Novell decides what goes in" approach is way too extreme. For example, I plan to make a few of my own that I think have very very little chances of ending up "broken or low low quality". With the current approach, these get locked out of the official distribution. I would hold Novell 100% responsible for the SuSE Linux release but I would be inclined to allow more participation in the SuSE Linux OSS products (which I think would end up being of very good quality overall anyway). Thanks. Alejo. http://azul.freaks-unidos.net/ ---=( Comunidad de Usuarios de Software Libre en Colombia )=--- ---=( http://bachue.com/colibri )=--=( colibri@bachue.com )=---

On 9/12/2005 5:31 AM Scott Leighton wrote:

On Sunday 11 September 2005 7:57 pm, Alejandro Forero Cuervo wrote:

As I said earlier, I would not object to a repository that contained '3rd party' packages that SUSE makes no claim of any responsibility.

AFAIK That is what the suse-Mirrors with the apt7yum/yast/.. repositories are doing atm.

But the stuff I receive on the media in the box set implies, at least to me, that it meets SUSE's quality standards and has passed QC, so I can trust that I will encounter no issues using any packages on that media.

ACK.

Sorry, but I don't see how that would work. You say 'broken or low quality packages would be removed', well who does that? It's SUSE's name on the distro, in order to even know a package is broken, they would have to QC it, incurring that expense. Why should they bother?

ACK here too.

...

I would hold Novell 100% responsible for the SuSE Linux release but I would be inclined to allow more participation in the SuSE Linux OSS products (which I think would end up being of very good quality overall anyway).

Hey, I have absolutely no objection to having 3rd party stuff on a downloadable ISO or a repository online somewhere. I just think that loading up the official boxed set distro with a bunch of extra stuff unnecessarily increases the cost of producing the product and would confuse (and potentially infuriate if they were broken) new users who already have package overload.

ACK. If it is in the official box, I would assume that SUSE tested it or would have left it off that box. OJ -- Wenn man diese CD rückwärts abspielt, sind "Die satanischen Verse" zu hören. Das ist aber nicht weiter schlimm. Schlimm ist, dass sie Windows installiert, wenn man sie vorwärts abspielt.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Alejandro Forero Cuervo wrote: ...

I believe having a lot of packages (without allowing redundant packages) would be good, even if some of them are not as properly maintained as they could be. I would rather have 3 ISOs of very properly maintained software + 4 ISOs of averagely maintained packages + 4 ISOs of sparringly maintained software than just 3 ISOs of very properly maintained software. I feel that allowing relatively unused

I wonder why you are mentioning ISOs ? I think the top priority should be to discuss how we could integrate 3rd party package repositories (like Packman, James Ogley's, various suser-* on gwdg.de, mine, ...) into the distribution, /not/ into ISOs but e.g. offer them as a choice list of installation sources in YaST2, aggregate information about them in the opensuse.org site, through a common build infrastructure, common policies, etc... I think that putting them into ISOs is definately not a good idea, as that isn't flexible enough. Furthermore, the added value of our 3rd party repositories is two-fold: 1) offer packages that are not included in SUSE Linux (although it already includes a lot of packages) 2) offer newer releases of packages that are included in SUSE Linux, as SUSE/Novell's policy is to stick with the version that's shipped with a release and only provide security fixes (that are usually backported) Although openSUSE is the effort to create a strong community around the SUSE Linux distribution and that we're all looking forward to work together on that, the ISOs and the boxed set are still "SUSE Linux" (OSS or not) and that's Novell/SUSE's reputation. Like Scott already said, Novell should not have to be liable (in terms of support) or have its name put on the packages made by others. Besides that, as you have read the threads about it, I suppose that you also noticed the complexity involved with how to best implement that process. We still have to discuss a lot to get there, we'll eventually do, and then maybe one could think about a process to integrate some of those packages into SUSE Linux. But that decision must be left to Novell alone. Even if you name the ISOs "unsupported", most people will say that SUSE Linux s**ks because there were broken packages on it. Let's first try to find the best ways of integrating 3rd party repositories.

packages into the distribution would be benefical, at least better than not including them at all. I don't see any reasons why the quality of the "3 ISOs of very properly maintained software" would diminish by allowing the rest of the packages into the distribution. In this case, if a package is poorly maintained, anyone should be allowed to contribute and help improve its quality.

Sure. We can do that with 3rd party repositories, but not with ISOs.

Oh, and we could use tools similar to Debian's popularity contest to decide how to place our RPMs in our ISOs (probably marking the less important ISOs as "additional" or "optional").

No, you can't compare Debian with Novell here. The decision of what makes it into the SUSE Linux distribution should (and shall) remain with Novell. Is Debian offering installation support ? They're not.

Certainly, I'm not advocating letting anyone put up random crap and making it part of the distribution! I think there are many alternatives less extreme than the "Novell remains in control" approach.

Novell remains in control of the SUSE Linux distribution. That's fine and has already been discussed a little. Let them do (almost) whatever it takes to keep on providing us with the solid distribution SUSE Linux has always been. And let us as a community build (almost) whatever we want on top of and around that. You could make your /own/ distribution based on SUSE Linux OSS + integrate packages from other repositories (like Packman or mine) into ISOs. That's fine, nothing wrong with that.

Althoug I use SLES, SUSE Pro and NLD almost every day, I've been a long time Debian user: my perception is that most of their packages are of *very* *good* quality (it should be said that I have very little familiarity with Fedora). In their case, allowing anyone to create packages that are official part of the distribution has most certainly not decreased their overall quality.

It's true that the Debian packages are very high quality. But AFAIK that's because they're doing the exact opposite of what you're saying: they have *official maintainers* that are in charge of packages. They are *not* allowing "anyone" to create packages that make it into the "official" Debian distribution. It's quite a long and complex process of becoming an entitled official Debian package maintainer, they raise the bar quite high for someone to get there, and that's why they have good packages.

In my case I would package the Chicken Scheme compiler (along with many extensions) and the Ion window manager. Sure, they are relatively unpopular, but having them part of the distribution would surely make the life of those who depend on them easier.

And you're going to do the installation support for those, right ? You're going to do all the tests to see whether they work properly in the distribution, right ? Make those packages, put them online and available to everyone in your own package repository. Then join whatever the openSUSE packager aggregation process will be. That would be just fine, but including them into the SUSE Linux distribution ISOs involves a lot more than that.

With the current approach, I can't see any reasons why third-party developers would prefer to participate in (i.e. create packages for, promote, etc.) OpenSuSE rather than a distribution such as Debian, where they can become directly involved (as long as the specified procedures are followed).

Like becoming an official package maintainer, which is quite tedious. You're making wrong assumptions here. The reason for third-party packagers to participate in openSUSE should be that they like the distribution and because we (as a community, together with SUSE) develop a good model on how to integrate them into the process, but _not_ into the core distribution ISOs.

The reason I ask this is because, being a Novell employee, I am genuinously concerned with the future of OpenSUSE and I think its chances of success would be greater with a different approach. I know most of the Novell guys at SuSE are currently occupied with getting the 10.0 release out, but I find this issue far more important. It's a shame I couldn't jump into the discussion earlier.

The top priority now is to release 10.0, definately. Let's wait a little for the SUSE staff to get finished with that and I'm sure quite a few of them will jump actively into the discussion, and have their minds free enough to quickly get forward with that very critical topic. cheers - -- -o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/ /\\ _\_v The more things change, the more they stay insane. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFDJSTAr3NMWliFcXcRAqsAAJ4hWVUFsVg0BbOZyBgP/6vFYJfADgCgqtZw K646OBN1mogymnK+N6s5/TY= =OT08 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Just to clarify what SuSE users are expecting and what makes the main difference between a project for enthusiasts and by entushiasts of Free Software as Debian and a project like OpenSuSE, a project for and by people who wants to collaborate in a Novell/SuSE effort to open their technology to improve it and for enthusiasts of SuSE Linux and not just the Free Software ones (I mean, there is no SuSE GNU/Linux) : On Mon, 2005-09-12 at 08:01 -0500, Alejandro Forero Cuervo wrote:

They most certainly are. Look at:

http://www.debian.org/support

There are a lots of sites like that about SuSE, but, none of them are really support, the kind of "commercial support" that organization of different kinds used to have with contracts by respected companies with well seasoned technicians backed by vendors who make the techonology.

If you are refering to commercial support, look at

http://www.debian.org/consultants ,

which lists consultants in over 50 countries. As you can see, the procedures in place around Debian allow these consultants to offer commercial support around it, even though they control Debian, as a whole, much less than Novell controls SuSE (since they have to go through the regular procedures).

I'm really concerned about it : I saw on that link just 3 folks on my country (Peru) and for one of them I know there is no evaluation process, but, I looked in countries around and saw that Argentina got just 8, Venezuela just 2, Colombia got none, etc. At least, in my country, there are 4 companies given support for SuSE and no less than 80 experts in SuSE around the country. However, developers collaboration should be defined, because one of the main objectives of the project is to gain more developers involved with SuSE Linux and from the roadmap http://www.opensuse.org/Roadmap (yes, OpenSuSE has one), we can see that early next year Novell/SuSE will open AutoBuild (which is not the same as buildd). OpenSuSE is not Debian, it shouldn't be Debian (at least for me), but, it can take good practices from Debian and Debian should do the same from others, so, it could take the next step to be as professional as Linux from SuSE is. Regards, -- Walter Cuestas Agramonte InfoSec / Open Source Consultant LPIC-1 CCLE-CCLI BCLA RHCE BNSA MCP, CCNA, IBM CS MCNE, CNS, CNI, CNST, CLS http://wcuestas.blog-city.com Phone : 511-97926168 ##### ###### # # # # " # " # ##vvvvv## ## vvv ## # ## ## ## ### ### +++##### ##++ ++++++# #++++++ +++++++# #+++++++ +++++#######+++++ +++ +++

On Mon, 12 Sep 2005, Alejandro Forero Cuervo wrote: [...]

BTW (just because I'm curious), will Novell sell commercial support for the Linux SuSE OSS distribution?

No way. However, commercial support is available for SLES / NLD and SUSE Linux (retail version). Regards Christoph

On Tue, 13 Sep 2005, Marcus Meissner wrote:

On Tue, Sep 13, 2005 at 08:49:39AM +0200, Christoph Thiel wrote:

...

On Mon, 12 Sep 2005, Alejandro Forero Cuervo wrote:

[...]

...

BTW (just because I'm curious), will Novell sell commercial support for the Linux SuSE OSS distribution?

No way. However, commercial support is available for SLES / NLD and SUSE Linux (retail version).

Correction: Novell commercial support is NOT available for SUSE Linux retail. (it has only installation support)

No, it has "incident-based support and advanced support". Just browse to: http://www.novell.com/products/linuxprofessional/support/advanced.html Regards Christoph

On Fri, 9 Sep 2005, Alejandro Forero Cuervo wrote:

...

...

We are interested in creating a centralized repository of packaged software following some guidelines/policies to integrate properly, right?

Yes, I guess we all agree! For now I'd just like to point out one thing: Please drop the idea of one centralized distribution that everyone is trying to get changes / packages in. I know that this sound very strange at first, but it will be fundamental for the future success of openSUSE!

Hmm, I'm not sure I follow you. Why should we drop this idea? And why is droping it fundamental for the future success of OpenSUSE?

Robert and Daniel already gave great summaries of why this makes sense - there isn't much I could add to it right now ;)

Isn't this, to allow participation from everyone in building SuSE (in, among others, the form of changes / packages), the point of OpenSUSE?

Yes, but the idea of distributed / parallel distribution development contrary to a centralized approach doesn't prevent anyone from participating. Actually I guess it will rather make a much broader participance possible! But again, it will definitely take some time to get there... Regards Christoph