[users] Re: [packagers] The demise of the repotag

[Dag Wieers]

On Thu, 19 Apr 2007, Rex Dieter wrote:

> Dag Wieers wrote:
> 
> > As I expected and briefed before, Fedora and EPEL will not adopt a 
> > repotag.
> 
> True, fact (for now).
> 
> imo, the vote on the issue was denied mostly due to
> * the issue was ill-posed, and many folks felt the vote was rushed
> prematurely.
> * without a well-posed, documented issue to vote on, many folks voted
> no, not seeing any technical justification.  Considering most of the
> justifications *for* repotags were non-technical, that didn't bode well.

Rex, with all respect for your position, but it is pretty clear from all 
the mails on the EPEL mailinglist that both Fesco, Fedora board and 
decisive EPEL members that they either don't see the need or simply don't 
want it. Despite the examples provided and the feedback from RPMforge 
users.

And I do not see that changing any time soon, sorry.

 
> > With that they refuse to accept or consider the existence of a 
> > diversity of repositories, or at least promote themselves to be the one 
> > and only upstream provider of packages.
> ...
> > Now as stated multiple times on the EPEL mailinglist, Fedora/EPEL 
> > considers itself as the only big repository for EL despite the fact that 
> > they are the newcomer.
> 
> Please don't go making accusations and guessing at motivations here.

I cannot interprete it otherwise. I have seen repositories come and go, 
and almost all of them tag their packages. The only ones not tagging are 
the add-on repositories (like freshrpms) that follow an upstream provider.

The end result of not having repotags is that it confuses users and makes 
it impossible to mix repositories (whether this is using yum or by hand).
Examples have been provided in the discussions.

Even that has been disputed, which blows my mind.

Kind regards,
--   dag wieers,  dag at wieers.com,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
[all I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power]