[CentOS] How to encourage maintainers to update their software

Johnny Hughes johnny at centos.org
Sun Oct 29 13:17:37 UTC 2017


On 10/28/2017 01:36 PM, Frank Cox wrote:
> On Sat, 28 Oct 2017 13:07:41 -0500
> Johnny Hughes wrote:
> 
>>  But trying to convert CentOS Linux into Fedora is not only redundant
>> (Fedora already exists .. use it) .. a bastardized version of CentOS
>> with hundreds of newer manually maintained components is not really
>> CentOS, and Fedora is likely more stable than that monstrosity anyway.
> 
> There's a difference between upgrading core operating system functionality and a changing a few userland programs.  I compile the latest versions of Sylpheed and astyle (for example) and use those programs on my Centos 7 desktop computer.  I don't see any issue with doing things like this and don't believe that it decreases the stability of the system.
> 
> I don't want to tear my whole computer down and upgrade my operating system every six months, and I don't want to deal with the bleeding-edge stuff that might or might not work when it affects something like network connectivity or whether I actually get a picture on the screen when I boot up my computer.  But for userland programs, why not run the latest version of Libreoffice or  Cool Reader if it's easy to compile them and I can get a few new features out of it?
> 

And as long as that works and they compile against the base shared
libraries, that is fine.

But that is usually NOT the case and newer versions of LibreOffice or
the others usually need a newer gtk or newer something else, etc.

I am all for adding content that does not exist .. if there is a long
term upstream for it.  I am, for example, adding a 4.9.x LTS kernel for
newer x86_64 or i386 embedded type boards that can also be used on newer
hardware if required
(https://wiki.centos.org/SpecialInterestGroup/AltArch/i386 , see
Experimental Repository)

But, it took me longer (and more effort) to make that one package work
with CentOS Linux 7 than it took for me to create the first 7.0.1406 tree.


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