This is a subject a bit 'dear' to my openSUSE use, as I've always held the view that the packages packaged by the Packman packagers was possibly the main reason why I have remained with openSUSE all these years.
I am VERY grateful to the efforts of the 3rd party packagers who package for openSUSE, and in particular to those who belong to the Packman packager group. My preferences as a somewhat selfish user (in order of preference from what I would like the most, to the least) would be: Option-3 : debianista Option-1 : all-in-one Option-2 : divide and conquer Having stated the above, I am concerned "Option-3" might make the work load such that the packaging suffers from a quantity perspective, and so Option-3 could easily be 2nd priority to Option-1 in my books. I am concerned that our user base (not our packager, I mean our user base) is not knowledgeable enough to implement the repositories in the Option-2 approach, despite the best/superb efforts of our packagers to make it easy for them. Hence I'm not in favour of Option-2. I like the big "all-in-one" repository approach. Lee aka oldcpu On 12/31/2010 12:27 AM, Pascal Bleser wrote: > Dear Packmans :) > (I'm putting the discussion on the public list to give our users a > chance to give their input/preferences as well) > > Detlef was so kind to set up a new (and fresh) OBS 2.1 instance (it's on > another server, the currently running OBS 1.7 instance on pmbs is still > up & running until we switch). > > To make our lives easier, we decided that we'll migrate the packages > manually, one by one, instead of attempting a server-side migration. > We will lose package history but that's not really much of a problem > (IMHO). > > The other reason we want to make it manually is that we have a (rare) > chance of setting up a new project layout, as the current one has > several deficiencies. > > So, right now, we need to discuss what we'd like to have. > > Whatever the option, one thing we will definitely do is to enable 11.1, > 11.2 and 11.3 on project-level, hence on all the packages, instead of > having to enable them on every single package as we have it now (which > is really a pain in the ...). That's also how it's managed on > build.opensuse.org, by exception (disable those you don't want to build > or, rather, those that don't work). > > Option 1: all-in-one > -------------------- > The first option is to have all the packages in a single OBS project, as > we have right now in "main_pm", which we also result in a single, big > packman package repository for users. > > Pros: > + users just need to add a single repository > Cons: > - users have no granularity, it's one big repository with everything > (codecs, multimedia, random updated packages) > - more difficult for us to select a subset of "essential" packages for a > "minimal packman" (i.e. codecs and multimedia), e.g. for Factory and > SLE > > Option 2: divide and conquer > ---------------------------- > The other extreme is to split the set of packages into several > projects (and, hence repositories) to enable users to pick what they > want to have, e.g.: > * codecs > * multimedia > * games > * stuff > > Of course, and OBS gives us the ability of doing so, we'll have > dependencies between those projects/repositories, like a "layering": > > codecs > ^ > | > multimedia > .^ ^. > / \ > games stuff > > Pros: > + users can pick what they want from Packman, e.g. only the codecs and > the multimedia stuff > + easier for us to enable a minimal set of things for Factory and SLE > (we just need to enable Factory and SLE11 on codecs and multimedia) > Cons: > - the users who want everything from Packman will need to add more than > one repository (arguably, that's already how it works with > download.opensuse.org) > > 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). > > Pros: > + users only need to add one or two repositories and won't get updates > all the time, which will most probably give them a better experience > regarding stability > + OBS can help us, by using links on revisions (from unstable to stable) > Cons: > - potentially more work for us, as it is easier to just bump the version > to the latest than having to only do it when there are security issues > (we will always update to the latest version for the "unstable" > repository/repositories anyway) > > Other options: anything in-between, or combinations thereof. > > Ideas, preferences ? > > cheers > > > > _______________________________________________ > Packman mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.links2linux.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/packman _______________________________________________ Packman mailing list [email protected] http://lists.links2linux.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/packman
