Broken FC5 packages - stay clear.

Tue Jun 13 02:14:00 CDT 2006

On Mon, 12 Jun 2006 15:31:12 +0100
Mike Hearn <mike at plan99.net> wrote:

> On Mon, 12 Jun 2006 00:03:23 +0200, Andreas Bierfert wrote:
> > Well from a wine perspective I see that this makes sense, but if you take a
> > look at all the dependencies it is another story...
> 
> This is a problem with RPM and not with Wine. If RPM/yum had the concept
> of optional dependencies like some other systems do then this would really
> not be an issue. A better way to handle this would be to fix RPM, or

It does know about this (don't quite remember the version it was introduced
with but it allows for that now).

> simply to not mark them as dependencies at all yet still build the
> package with those features enabled. If the supporting libraries are

This is just wrong packaging. Sorry if this sounds harsh but that cannot be the
solution and it never will be in Fedora Extras.

> missing the features will be disabled at runtime usually with a message on
> stderr.

Don't get me wrong... I am really happy that in the near future (1-2 years)
rpm and yum support for optional dependencies will be spread enough so it
solves a lot of issues like this one and I am really happy to make use
of it... but for now this is not an option, sadly...

> The problem here is exactly the same as with Debian. This approach is
> just broken and should not be used. What if the user does not know about

Hm maybe it is... but then I am no wine crack... splitting stuff up is
something you do in packaging and what really is encouraged by distributions.
Splitting stuff makes users happy and I can see why... ;) Looking over to
debian and thinking about the stuff that is installed by 'make install' got me
to the layout I have now... I don't say its perfect... it never was and it
probably never will be... that is why I like input from upstream... I am the
packager not the guy who did all the work on wine but I am the packager and I
know what is needed/wanted/regulated on the fedora side of the story. Together
with your input I am more than happy to change things around, just need people
upstream who are willing to listen and talk to packagers and I hope in this
case it will work. On thing I could offer which probably makes sense anyway is
to mention sub packages in the description or in a README-Fedora.

> wine-tools and does not install it? They will be missing:
> 
>  * winecmd
>  * notepad
>  * winedbg
>  * winepath
>  * winhelp
>  * _EXPLORER_
> 
> These may appear to to be optional but they are not.
> 
> Explorer is needed for shell integration, HAL support and system tray
> support. It is not an end user tool, it's a part of the Wine
> infrastructure.

Ok, will move explorer to the main wine package.

> Winedbg is needed to produce useful crash data for developers. Notepad and
> winecmd are sometimes used by installers which will *fail silently* if
> they are missing. Winepath is used by various third party scripts. Winhelp
> is used by apps for online help, obviously.

hm then maybe stuff should be merged to the main wine package for the stuff
mentioned above... will look into it and if you have further input and
suggestions rest assured that they are always welcome.

> Gah. This is just frustrating. The same mistakes are made over and over
> and over again. And we are the ones who get to pick up the bugs. What was
> wrong with the way Vincent did it?

Well for one thing: Direct them to me or https://bugzilla.redhat.com. I have
no problem with that and I stand for what I do. Maybe just maybe try to see the
packager/distro side of things and you will see that what Vincent did was great
work and is for certain things but for what is modern packaging and very
distribution specific to fedora or even fedora extras the way I did it is the
way to go... not by my opinion but the opinion and rules of the fedora
community... if you don't like it fine... ignore it, ignore me... but I'd
rather work together with you and the wine team on improving the wine
experience for users and not fighting here wasting time that could be better
spent improving the user situation.

- Andreas

-- 
Andreas Bierfert               | http://awbsworld.de      | GPG: C58CF1CB
andreas.bierfert at lowlatency.de | http://lowlatency.de     | signed/encrypted
phone: +49 2402 102373         | cell: +49 173 5803043    | mail preferred
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