[CentOS] How to encourage maintainers to update their software

On 10/27/2017 2:54 PM, Frank Cox wrote:
>
> I do that with a number of packages that are either newer or simply not available in the various Centos repos.  In many cases it's as easy as downloading a new tar source file and adding it to the existing source rpm, doing three seconds of editing on the spec file to account for the new update, and compiling the result.  Sometimes it's even easier -- just download a newer Fedora rpm and compile that on your Centos system.
>
It would be nice if this remained even a *suggestion* at the Fedora 
layer, but there seems to be from occasional obliviousness to outright 
hostility to the idea of keeping spec files broadly compatible across a 
range of downstream releases and for other RPM-based distributions, or 
not ripping out compatibility at Fedora-speed. (Even leaving aside 
"burn-the-ships" actions like outright banning SysV init scripts.)

It didn't seem to use to be that case. IMO it makes a lot more sense to 
wrap distro-specific .spec file changes in conditionals and let the 
rpmbuild do the right thing than to post and maintain separate versions 
for Fedora, EPEL, and anything else.


-jc