Re: [gentoo-dev] GLEP 19, reloaded (again)

[Chris Bainbridge]

On Tuesday 10 August 2004 22:24, Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-08-10 at 16:19, Chris Bainbridge wrote:
> > So heres the cheeky proposal... make a "redhat" release. Follow redhats
> > release cycle, and match their versions. Use their backported fixes.
> > Commercial software will work. Bugs will be fixed. This is the power of
> > open source.
>
> Why?  So users can have portage and the "commercial vendors" will still
> release their stuff in RPM only and expect the exact same libraries of
> the same versions to be installed with the same features as Red Hat.

Yes.

> Are you also wanting to get rid of USE flags?  How about CFLAGS?  To be
> able to ensure Red Hat compatibility, both of those would have to be
> standardized to be exactly like Red Hat's.  This means CFLAGS would be
> what Red Hat uses and we would compile with the same ./configure options
> on each package.  At that point, we're wasting an enormous amount of
> time trying to be Red Hat, and no time trying to make Gentoo better.

Reproducing the binaries exactly is obviously not possible or desirable, but 
if you pin all the package versions then everything will be compatible; it 
would use same gcc, same binutils, libraries etc. Not perfect, but good 
enough.

I would also suggest that if this GLEP goes ahead each package maintainer  
should have a choice as to whether their package is in the frozen tree. 
Otherwise in 6 months time users will be filing bugs, getting the "won't 
support this/please upgrade" response, and complaining that its meant to be a 
frozen tree with a long bug fix cycle.


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