On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 01:37:46PM +0100, Pavol Rusnak wrote:
Yes, and for this reason I'd rather avoid linking the package. As far as I undestand, the reason why the packages in both repositories are the same is that so far it has been only bugfix releases going to both repositories. I know nothing about chromium development model, but what would happen if they released new version with new features (i.e. not a bugfix release)? This should certainly go to oS:F:C, but shouldn't be in oS:11.2:C, which would mean breaking the link => mess.
I told Raymond to post here, because I think we need to reconsider Contrib policy. Chromium is used by around 15% of users, which is higher percentage than for example Opera. This means that Chromium is important package and deserves a place in Contrib repo. However, there are a few problems with it:
OK, personally, I'm fine with reconsidering the Contrib policy.
a) Google folks don't use proper versioning scheme - they keep increasing the build number and Chromium version is (latest released Chrome version + 1) - that's why it jumped from 4.0.306 to 5.0.307 (after Chrome 4 release) although there were almost no significant changes - it is hard to tell whether the release is bugfix only or not (certainly not from the version number)
b) unpacked chromium sources are ~3GB and it is veeery painful to maintain patches (e.g. using quilt needs twice as much space)
That's why I suggest to allow version updates for Contrib repository for small set of "exceptional" packages.
Fine with me. How would you like to define these exceptional packages? OK, they have to be leaf (though it's not clear how to tell the package is leaf). Does that mean all non-leaf packages could/should be exceptional in this way? If not all leaf packages, which ones (except chromium) and how would you like to decide which packages should be exceptional?
These packages have to be leaf packages and should be linked from openSUSE:XX.Y:Contrib to openSUSE:Factory:Contrib and maintained in the latter one. What do you think of this change?
Allowing linked packages in openSUSE:XX.Y:Contrib would require us to be much more cautious while working on the respective packages in oS:F:C and it would also break the rule that only a very limited set of people have permission to modify packages in openSUSE:XX.Y:Contrib (theoretically, every maintainer of oS:F:C could break stuff in openSUSE:XX.Y:Contrib). If the Contrib community agrees that this change is desired, considers possible issues and documents the changes (@wiki), then it's fine with me. Regards, Petr -- Petr Uzel, openSUSE Boosters Team IRC: ptr_uzl @ freenode