In today's meeting, we tried to clarify the distinction between the new Contrib repository project and GNOME:Community. In a nutshell, we feel that Contrib is the community version of OSS/Non-OSS, in that packages are stable and released with the distro, and likely will only issue security updates and such during the lifetime of that distro version. Whereas, GNOME:Community (or G:C) is considered to be more bleeding edge.
Likely, some things from OSS/Non-OSS might also get moved over to Contrib if enough community members can maintain it, thus relieving Novell of some of the packaging work and freeing up its devs.
So it was decided that it is evident that we need to appoint a volunteer to monitor G:C/Contrib/OSS/Non-OSS and coordinate what packages need to be copied over to Contrib.
But before we do that, we felt it was important to first determine what guidelines we as a group agree upon for how to determine the criteria for submitting to Contrib. And we're discussing that here and now. Note: No possible criteria was brought up during the meeting itself. Clean slate here.
An example package we used in today's meeting was Pidgin. At what point do we feel that Pidgin in G:C is ready to be copied over to Contrib for the next distro release?
Let the discussion begin! :-)
Bryen Yunashko Proud 2008 openSUSE Board Candidate
Hi,
Bryen schrieb:
Likely, some things from OSS/Non-OSS might also get moved over to Contrib if enough community members can maintain it, thus relieving Novell of some of the packaging work and freeing up its devs.
Most unlikely something from non-oss gets moved since the buildservice policy doesn't allow that. As far as I understood (up to now) Novell doesn't plan to outsource something right now (but probably will at some point) but we sometimes see package giveaways and drop requests where Contrib could be the right place if they are not taken Novell internal. And as Alexey always points out Contrib is for the thousands of packages Debian has and openSUSE hasn't.
But before we do that, we felt it was important to first determine what guidelines we as a group agree upon for how to determine the criteria for submitting to Contrib. And we're discussing that here and now. Note: No possible criteria was brought up during the meeting itself. Clean slate here.
An example package we used in today's meeting was Pidgin. At what point do we feel that Pidgin in G:C is ready to be copied over to Contrib for the next distro release?
Pidgin is a very bad example since it exists in openSUSE and therefore is not allowed to be in Contrib. _And_ I don't think that even when Gnome switched the default to something else Pidgin can't/shouldn't be dropped from openSUSE (yet).
So the criteria (also inherited from Contrib) could be: - package must not exist in openSUSE - package must not create file conflicts with openSUSE - package can be (mostly) maintained w/o version/feature upgrades - package can be built against plain openSUSE (and Contrib) - make sense to have frozen in Contrib (some packages are that fast changing that it doesn't make much sense to have a frozen one) ...
Wolfgang
On Fri, 2008-09-26 at 09:53 +0200, Wolfgang Rosenauer wrote:
Pidgin is a very bad example since it exists in openSUSE and therefore is not allowed to be in Contrib. _And_ I don't think that even when Gnome switched the default to something else Pidgin can't/shouldn't be dropped from openSUSE (yet).
Right... GNOME 2.24 now ships with Empathy (a Telepathy based IM client). Problem with it: it's still _years_ behind Pidgin. I like the idea of Telepathy in general, but there's just no use in shipping Empathy by default right now, as users will miss tons of features they had in Pidgin.
Cheers, -Michael
Hi Michael,
On Fri, 2008-09-26 at 10:02 +0200, Michael Monreal wrote:
Right... GNOME 2.24 now ships with Empathy (a Telepathy based IM client). Problem with it: it's still _years_ behind Pidgin. I like the idea of Telepathy in general, but there's just no use in shipping Empathy by default right now, as users will miss tons of features they had in Pidgin.
My gap analysis certainly shows some holes, but I'd love to compare it with yours: what are you missing that you need ? :-)
Thanks,
Michael.
On Fri, 2008-09-26 at 09:17 +0100, Michael Meeks wrote:
My gap analysis certainly shows some holes, but I'd love to compare it with yours: what are you missing that you need ? :-)
Mostly better protocol coverage and/or quality of the "supported" CMs. Also the GUI is missing the ability to group various contacts into one (to assign more than one account to a given person, which is REALLY useful).
To be fair, I have not tested empathy during the last 3 month but I doubt it has changed much since. Basicly, it's nice if you only want XMPP (and don't care about MUCs) but for other popular protocols it's not really usable. And AFAIK there's noone working full time on the project anymore now, which does not really help.
Cheers, -Michael
On Fri, 2008-09-26 at 10:28 +0200, Michael Monreal wrote:
On Fri, 2008-09-26 at 09:17 +0100, Michael Meeks wrote:
My gap analysis certainly shows some holes, but I'd love to compare it with yours: what are you missing that you need ? :-)
Mostly better protocol coverage and/or quality of the "supported" CMs. Also the GUI is missing the ability to group various contacts into one (to assign more than one account to a given person, which is REALLY useful).
To be fair, I have not tested empathy during the last 3 month but I doubt it has changed much since. Basicly, it's nice if you only want XMPP (and don't care about MUCs) but for other popular protocols it's not really usable. And AFAIK there's noone working full time on the project anymore now, which does not really help.
Cheers, -Michael
Let's not turn this thread into a discussion of pidgin vs. empathy and such. That's not the intention here, and I merely presented pidgin as an example because it is included by default in openSUSE and it is in G:C. The focus of this thread should be: What are the guidelines we should follow for what and when to copy packages from G:C to Contrib.
Thanks, Bryen Yunashko Proud 2008 Candidate for openSUSE Board
Le vendredi 26 septembre 2008, à 08:44 -0500, Bryen a écrit :
The focus of this thread should be: What are the guidelines we should follow for what and when to copy packages from G:C to Contrib.
Here's my proposal (which extends to the main repo, and not just G:C).
First, I think there are two roles in G:C, which is why it's a bit difficult to know what to do:
+ provide packages not in the main repository (eg: last-exit, meld, etc.) + provide up-to-date packages for old version of openSUSE (eg, I guess: pidgin, f-spot, etc.)
I don't think we can keep it both ways. I propose that we use G:C as a staging area for Contrib (maybe even rename it to GNOME:Contrib) -- a bit like G:F and oS:F. It doesn't mean all packages in G:C are ready for Contrib -- but the goal would be to have them all in Contrib in the end. (FWIW, I'd find it weird to have something in G:C that we don't want to see in Contrib)
I also propose we create a GNOME:Backport or whatever to fill the second role of the current G:C.
Now, to extend this a bit more: it might make sense to look at all the packages in G:F and see which ones are not installed by default. Those packages can also be a good start for things we might want to move to Contrib.
Also, I strongly believe we should maintain the packages in G:F, G:C and the relevant packages in Contrib the same way, as a team.
Vincent
On Fri, 2008-09-26 at 16:00 +0200, Vincent Untz wrote:
Le vendredi 26 septembre 2008, à 08:44 -0500, Bryen a écrit :
The focus of this thread should be: What are the guidelines we should follow for what and when to copy packages from G:C to Contrib.
Here's my proposal (which extends to the main repo, and not just G:C).
First, I think there are two roles in G:C, which is why it's a bit difficult to know what to do:
- provide packages not in the main repository (eg: last-exit, meld, etc.)
- provide up-to-date packages for old version of openSUSE (eg, I guess: pidgin, f-spot, etc.)
I don't think we can keep it both ways. I propose that we use G:C as a staging area for Contrib (maybe even rename it to GNOME:Contrib) -- a bit like G:F and oS:F. It doesn't mean all packages in G:C are ready for Contrib -- but the goal would be to have them all in Contrib in the end. (FWIW, I'd find it weird to have something in G:C that we don't want to see in Contrib)
I also propose we create a GNOME:Backport or whatever to fill the second role of the current G:C.
Now, to extend this a bit more: it might make sense to look at all the packages in G:F and see which ones are not installed by default. Those packages can also be a good start for things we might want to move to Contrib.
Also, I strongly believe we should maintain the packages in G:F, G:C and the relevant packages in Contrib the same way, as a team.
I mostly agree with Vincent here, although we'll still need to have new versions of packages in the distro stored in G:C, while the others should all move to :Contrib (after being staged in G:C until ready).
Also, I like the idea of moving stuff in G:F to :contrib, like gftp and others.
And yes, we should maintain all as a team, if not, we'll end up having lots of unmaintained packages
Coming a bit late to the party, Magnus asked me to weigh-in.
First, I think there are two roles in G:C, which is why it's a bit difficult to know what to do:
- provide packages not in the main repository (eg: last-exit, meld, etc.)
- Which may be packages "not yet" in the main repo or packages which used to be in the main repo.
- provide up-to-date packages for old version of openSUSE (eg, I guess: pidgin, f-spot, etc.)
I don't think we can keep it both ways. I propose that we use G:C as a staging area for Contrib (maybe even rename it to GNOME:Contrib) -- a bit like G:F and oS:F. It doesn't mean all packages in G:C are ready for Contrib -- but the goal would be to have them all in Contrib in the end. (FWIW, I'd find it weird to have something in G:C that we don't want to see in Contrib)
I sort-of agree with this but with this suggestion as to how to it might work:
GNOME:Contrib - a staging area for the Contrib repo. My understanding from the discussion is that Contrib is a sort of super-blessed extra repo (which is why it's version-frozen in the same way as the corresponding product). This means that this area has packages that DO NOT feature in the main repo and have yet to have been agreed to even make it into Contrib but are being tested for that purpose.
Might it be that packages that are dropped from the main repo could be moved to Contrib rather than to G:C?
I also propose we create a GNOME:Backport or whatever to fill the second role of the current G:C.
Why not keep it called GNOME:Community to avoid an added layer of confusion? It could continue to provide leading-edge version-updates of software that exists in BOTH the main repo and [GNOME:]Contrib because having that option open to people is popular as far as I can tell.
Now, to extend this a bit more: it might make sense to look at all the packages in G:F and see which ones are not installed by default. Those packages can also be a good start for things we might want to move to Contrib.
Along with currently not included packages in G:C.
Also, I strongly believe we should maintain the packages in G:F, G:C and the relevant packages in Contrib the same way, as a team.
Hear hear!
-
Bryen -
James Ogley -
Michael Meeks -
Michael Monreal -
Rodrigo Moya -
Vincent Untz -
Wolfgang Rosenauer