Broken FC5 packages - stay clear.

[Michael Stefaniuc]

n0dalus wrote:
> I think that person should really be you :). Your preconceptions about
> how things should be packaged is a bit outdated.
> 
> A few years ago there used to be monolithic packages well over 100MB
> that every time something small was changed the whole lot needed to be
> updated. Splitting up packages is a good thing. It means less install
> size, less bandwidth used and easier updates. The packages should have
Dream on! As long as all those subpackages are generated from the same
SRPM you will save nothing and get all of them if the SRPM changes.
Could be seen very nicely with X where a stoneage small program had a
security bug and the _whole_ X was upgraded including the font files.
And yes, X was already split in subpackages. Now that's fixed with the
modular xorg but that's *not* an achievement of the packagers but of the
upstream project.
Where subpackes help is to limit the amount of requirements the program
has. That's highly used on heavy customized servers and less so on the
desktop.

I like how it's done for git in fedora extras: git is a meta package
which requires all subpackages making it very easy and intuitive to get
it. So having something like wine being the meta package and the actual
wine subpackage being renamed to wine-core would give the user
friendliness and choice for those who need it.

> meaningful descriptions, and should depend on each other in a way that
> means you just choose what you want and the package manager will get
> what you need. Some time in the future (or already) the package
> manager may make the distinction between required packages, suggested
> packages and enhancement packages, making it easier for users like
> yourself to work out what they want.

I like how it's done for git in fedora extras: git is a meta package
which requires all subpackages making it very easy and intuitive to get
it. So having something like wine being the meta package and the actual
wine subpackage being renamed to wine-core would give the user
friendliness and choice for those who need it.

bye
	michael
-- 
Michael Stefaniuc               Tel.: +49-711-96437-199
Sr. Network Engineer            Fax.: +49-711-96437-111
Red Hat GmbH                    Email: mstefani at redhat.com
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