[CentOS] mplayer repository for CentOS

Bryan J. Smith

b.j.smith at ieee.org
Sat May 21 13:22:52 UTC 2005


On Sat, 2005-05-21 at 07:46 +0200, Dag Wieers wrote:
> The FUD is related to the fact that fedora.us was never interested in 
> working with existing repositories. 

I was wondering when you'd join the conversation.  ;->
First off, I never said they did.

> With Fedora Extras it didn't much improve in the sense that the only
> way they listen is if you're part of the team and the only way to be
> part of the team is to sign legal papers.

>From my understanding, as of January, they have a formal package
submission processor whereby you do not.  I've been talking to a few
people about adding my own.

Unless, of course, you want to have your own, "independent" repository,
and use the formal name.  Yes, that's a legal thing then, and
unavoidable.

> So they introduced (and are introducing) stuff that breaks my stuff and 
> they don't care.

Someone "has to be the master."  It's just reality.  It is the same deal
in the Debian world.

> And it wouldn't even help as they're not doing RHEL packages and fork for 
> different distributions. They actually only support the latest Fedora 
> release and the previous Fedora release. So tough luck if you want RHEL2, 
> RHEL3

I think that is now changing that it is now more formalized.  Prior to
January, it was largely just the former U of Hawaii.  But now I'm seeing
FE and, even more so, Lorg supporting all the way back to at least FC1.
That means I'm good for RHEL3 so far -- although I admit no one can
predict the future.

Not to step on your continued good will and endeavors, but how much
regression testing do you do of your packages before you put them out?
If it compiles, great, if it builds, ship it?  That's what I assume it
is?

> (and when Fedora 5 is released RHEL4 packages from Fedora Extras
> probably don't build because of changes).

Possibly.  I've been very, very critical of Red Hat's current
"revisioning strategy" (or lackthereof) with Fedora Core and I believe
it's ultimately going to affect their RHEL release quality.  There's
absolutely no reason for this, but I think some people have forgotten
the stilts that RHEL is built on -- just like RHL before it.

Which is why I'm seriously considering moving to SuSE Linux, because
Novell seems to have a formal Novell-SuSE strategy that ties well
together.  We'll see as of NL10, SL10.x, but I'm hopeful.

> So you're basicly mixing a philosophy (Fedora Core development, not 
> looking back) and the philosophy that says, keep compatibility with older 
> distributions, and only fork when maintaining a single SPEC file is more 
> costly than forking.

Make no mistake, I'm _no_fan_ of Red Hat's "undeclared" strategy on
Fedora Core, and the greater Fedora Project in general.  They are
starting to take more of a "pro-active" interest in the greater Fedora
Project as of January, and that's good.

> It's true that RPMforge does not offer any more than the packages and the 
> ability to help out by reporting problems. So if you have problems with 
> any of the packages, report it, otherwise we can't help.


> BTW Much of the rest of your email was pretty incorrect about the history 
> of Fedora and existing repositories.

Can you be specific?  Please correct my misinformation then, for all our
benefit (including my own).  A lot of my information comes from being on
the Red Hat lists, talking to Red Hat employees as well as the Red Hat
marketing to try to repair a lot of the damage that eWeek's mis-quotes
of Michael Tiemann did back in 2003.

I started using the U of Hawaii Fedora Project as of early 2003.
Before that I used FreshRPMS.NET since mid-2001.
I have been using your repository on and off since late 2003 as well.

I took an interest in Connectiva's port of APT to RPM early on, and even
started using it as a means of configuration management internally.
When the independent repositories started springing up, that was just a
bonus.

But I quickly found the U of Hawaii's APT-RPM to be the best -- at least
compared to FreshRPMS.NET.  The first major difference I noticed was how
it handled kernel upgrades.  Again, I admit I had not looked at your
repository at that time, and I full claimed ignorance in an earlier
post.

> But I guess you weren't around back then :)

No, I wasn't actively involved with Red Hat Linux development, just on
the Red Hat and other lists as a lurker.  I have contributed bug fixes
and package changes here and there, but nothing major.  Most of it has
largely been kernel-related (since 1994) but, again, nothing really
notable at all.

I've been integrating Red Hat Linux into corporate networks for more
than just web services (e.g., file servers, engineering build systems,
etc...) since Red Hat Linux 4.2 (and various distros for various web
duties before even Apache was formalized).  Again, once APT came over to
RPM thanx to Connectiva, it was the needed tool to help out with
distributed configuration management of a Linux network.

Unlike many people in the '90s, I wasn't just using Linux as a rogue
Samba or Apache server.  I had distributed engineering workstations and
computational networks -- so I was maintaining dozens of systems on an
network, and not just one or two I could patch manually.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith                                     b.j.smith at ieee.org 
--------------------------------------------------------------------- 
It is mathematically impossible for someone who makes more than you
to be anything but richer than you.  Any tax rate that penalizes them
will also penalize you similarly (to those below you, and then below
them).  Linear algebra, let alone differential calculus or even ele-
mentary concepts of limits, is mutually exclusive with US journalism.
So forget even attempting to explain how tax cuts work.  ;->





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