[packman] OBS 2.x and new repository layout

[Pascal Bleser]

On 2010-12-31 02:49:06 (+0000), Carl Eugen Hoyos <cehoyos at ag.or.at> wrote:
> Pascal Bleser <pascal.bleser at ...> writes:
> > Option 3: debianista
> > --------------------
> > Another approach to "several projects/repos" could also be to split into
> > stable and unstable or, rather, to freeze the versions of codecs and
> > multimedia packages with every openSUSE release (and only update on
> > critical bugfixes and security issues).
> 
> I'd like to *strongly* discourage this!
> Please believe me that this does not solve *any* (possible) problems.
> (for FFmpeg and MPlayer, I am not sure what else could be meant with "codecs and
> multimedia packages" and I don't know how well or how badly this would work for
> other projects).

Yes, ffmpeg, mplayer, mad, gstreamer*fugly,...

How would that be a problem?

The idea is that most users just want the codecs and multimedia stuff
from Packman (I said "most", not "all"). Or, at least, that's my
assumption, which, of course, might be complete wrong :)
But assuming so, we always have the strong divide between users who want
it to "just work" and favour stability over anything else, and those who
want the latest versions to have more features (and performance etc..).
Personally, I respect both preferences.
Packman as it is right now is best suited for those who want features,
as we permanently update our packages with the newest versions.
This has several consequences:
- things that worked might break,
- a "zypper ref" almost always pulls in a lot of megabytes for the
  Packman metadata
+ we provide them with the latest and greatest
+/- it's pretty much a "rolling" distr^Wrepository

Hence, and still in my humble opinion, Packman is well suited for the
latter category of users (features) and not well suited for the former
(stability).

So the idea with "option 3" would be to provide both:
- we would keep the current approach in the "regular" repository (or
  repositories)
- we would also *additionally* provide a frozen repository with the
  "essential" packages (as said, ffmpeg, mplayer, mad, gstreamer, ...),
  and only update those when there are critical bugfixes or security
  fixes

But that obviously means more work for us.

> I don't immediately see what's wrong with 1), but I may not see the important
> things there.

Option 1 is "all-in-one". Well, I have definitely been poked a few times
on IRC about the idea of splitting it, in order to have users only pull
the stuff that is available nowhere else from Packman.

The "all-in-one" approach as it is right now is problematic because
there is quite some duplication of packages that are available both in
Packman and in other repositories that exist on d.o.o/repositories
which, in turn, creates package conflicts and "ping-pong" for many users.
Of course, if Packman were to be reduced to things that are only
available on Packman, it would strongly reduce the problem.

cheers
-- 
  -o) Pascal Bleser <pascal.bleser at opensuse.org>
  /\\ http://opensuse.org -- I took the green pill
 _\_v FOSDEM XI: 5 + 6 Feb 2011, http://fosdem.org
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