Lennert Buytenhek wrote:
So to me it would seem that all the metadata needed to build the distro should be something that you want to version control individually?
Most of this goes into the spec file itself. There are some things that are package dependant and not carried in the spec file - eg, the perpackage builder hints. But yes, I see your point. However, in the CentOS context, tracking this info with the package is easiest ( eg. which packages contribute to mixed arch, or even more complex when only some subpackages from the present package are contributed when the main package is not ).
(Note that the (1) use case is rather rare, and if you're not truncating history when checking out, you'll end up with a couple of gigabytes worth of checkout.)
Its not that corner case for us in the CentOS builder setups, we handle most things for the entire distro as a single collection and run branches for the entire trunk/ with each major released! Even signaling for the buildsystem is being done via a tag across the entire distro tree, and we do that a few times every release.
This is the sort of thing I meant with my 'thinking in svn terms'...
but thanks for your feedback, its helped confirm and reenforce the lines that I was thinking about as well.