On Tue, Mar 12, 2019 at 6:20 PM Christopher <ctubb...@fedoraproject.org> wrote: > Addendum: some of us part-time packagers, which depended on these > packages to build our own Java packages don't know how to convert to > modular packaging. I'm still trying to learn in my spare time, but I > don't know where to look and have limited time. It was nearly all the > spare cycles I had just to learn RPM, Fedora RPM packaging policies, > and how to use fedpkg, koji, and bodhi. Now... I'm kinda lost again > and feel like I'm starting over from scratch. I can't be the only one. > I still think a lot of this is being driven by experienced Fedora > packagers, and those involved in composes, but without a lot of regard > to the casual or relatively inexperienced packager. pkgdb was a highly > usable tool for inexperienced packagers, as it was a "one stop shop" > for everything related to your package... but now... it's hard to find > all the tools you need to do packaging. > > I have several Java packages that depend on one another, as well as > dependencies now in modular repos. I have no idea where to get > started. Which ones should be in the same module? Should each RPM be > put in separate modules? How do I create convert my packages to > modules? What is the workflow for builds? For updates? Do I still use > fedpkg to submit to koji and bodhi? How will users install my RPMs > now? I feel a bit overwhelmed by all of this... and I'm sure I should > be spending more time trying to figure all this out on my own... but I > really don't know where to start.
With "addon modularity" approach we currently use people shouldn't be required to convert anything to modules. The idea is that parts of Fedora can be modularized upon maintainer discretion. This change should be transparent to users that are not aware of modularity. Likewise, other Fedora developers should be able to maintain their packages, even if their dependencies move to modules. That is not possible without ordinary (non-modular, "ursine") packages being able to be built against modular content. Unfortunately Fedora developers (represented by FESCo) decided to forbid use of modules for building non-modular packages. This was a sad and very disappointing decision to read about and it was the direct cause that made me make the final decision to orphan all packages I used to maintain for years. Personally I think modularity is a great tool that will allow *me* to reduce the effort needed to maintain packages and at the same time improve user experience. But your mileage may vary. The effort that packagers need to make in order to learn the new technology and change their workflow may greatly outweight any possible gain from modularity, especially for packagers that maintain fewer packages. Therefore I discourage developers from moving their packages to modules if they don't see the benefit for them and their users. Instead I encourage people to talk about the problem. I hope FESCo will finally realize how important it is to allow building any package against modules and change the policy, allowing modules to be used as build dependencies for non-modular packages. -- Mikolaj Izdebski _______________________________________________ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org
