Fedora Extras vs. CLOSED RAWHIDE

[Florian La Roche]

> E.g. the bison.rpm from FC1 lacks a dependency on m4:
> http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=108655
> which causes packagers to resort to  either resort to build-require
> "bison m4" or "byacc" instead of "bison".

Your buildsystem should always require m4 until our source base is cleaned
up to support this fine-grained level of requirements. Until now it is not.

> IMO, it would be best if RH/FC would prefer not to close bugs as "CLOSED
> RAWHIDE" when ever reasonable/applicable and to officially upgrade the
> package instead. 
> Alternatively, it could also be worth to consider handing over such a
> package to "Fedora Extra" for "interim band-aid packages".
> 
> Note: I am not talking about RH to provide general "upstream" updates,
> nor I am talking about "Fedora Legacy" or "Fedora Alternaives".
> I am only referring to cases where RH's current update policy
> blocks/handicaps/limits usability of a release, because someone had
> decided a bug fix would not be relevant for public release.

If the problems are not critical enough to create an update, we fix them
in a development cycle and they go into the next release. I am against
leaving bugzillas open for such items, as this is just growing the number
of open bugs.

In general we already deal with the same issues where many packages have
dependencies to other packages and that is clearly visible if you look
at our development stream.

So if the problems don't warrant an update, I think the only solution is
to add workarounds into the other packages. In the case of buildrequires
I think it would be bad to create additional rpms instead of adding m4
to the list of essential rpm packages.

greetings,

Florian La Roche