On Tue, 2005-05-31 at 08:55 +0100, Andy Green wrote: > Paul Howarth wrote: > > |>probably a reasonable situation. However AIUI Extras will not cooperate > |>with the Dag/RPMforge repos for example, which do offer mplayer, about > > | Packages in Fedora Extras are built with the knowledge that third > | parties will be wanting to provide things like MP3 support (and indeed > | that users demand it), so it's likely that livna (which has historically > | been compatible with fedora.us/Extras) will fill that gap nicely. > > Seems strange that it was not possible to cooperate with Dag, which has > provided many fine and high quality packages to me in the past, but it > is possible to find harmony with Livna. The effect is that Livna is > anointed by Redhat one-step-removed as the slightly Official vendor of > Forbidden Fruit when they provide Extras .repo enabled by default... and > that Dag is frozen out from Redhat's "warm" embrace. > > Redhat can do what they like since it's their show, I just feel a bit > sad for Dag. Dag and the RPMforge guys provide a fine repository and I don't think anyone disputes this. I think that the compatibility issues (at least between Extras and the other repos) will iron themselves out before much longer. I think this because: (a) the Fedora Extras development process is less tied up with red tape than used to be the case with fedora.us - and the differing processes were I think the biggest difference between fedora.us and the third- party repos, (b) many of the packages in Extras are actually based on Dag's packages, and (c) with Extras being a default repo, the third-party repo maintainers are probably going to have to try to maintain compatibility with it whether they like it or not, otherwise people will just stop using them. So whilst there may not be any official cooperation with Dag or any other third-party packager, Extras packages should/will be built with this in mind and I think repo compatibility issues will diminish significantly over the coming months. Another point to bear in mind is that the Extras packages are largely maintained by "community" maintainers, and if anyone wants to raise a compatibility issue in Extras bugzilla, the maintainer of the affected package may well try to fix it. I know I certainly would. Paul. -- Paul Howarth <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
