[Gluster-devel] How can we prevent GlusterFS packaging installation/update issues in future?

[Justin Clift]

On 19 Feb 2015, at 09:00, Niels de Vos <ndevos at redhat.com> wrote:
> Hey Pranith!
> 
> Thanks for putting this topic on my radar. Uncommunicated packaging
> changes have indeed been a pain for non-RPM distributions on several
> occasions. We should try to inform other packagers about required
> changes in the packaging scripts or upgrade/installation process better.
> 
> On Thu, Feb 19, 2015 at 12:26:33PM +0530, Pranith Kumar Karampuri wrote:
>> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1113778

A technical solution would be a validation script that can be run as root
and checks for the availability of all the required GlusterFS binaries.

If they're not found in the PATH it barfs with errors message(s) about it.

Shouldn't be hard to implement, if we know all the binary names to check for.


>> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1191176
>> 
>> How can we make the process of giving good packages for things other than
>> RPMs?
> 
> My guess is that we need to announce packaging changes very clearly.
> Maybe it makes sense to have a very low-traffic packaging at gluster.org
> mailinglist where all packagers from all distributions are subscribed?
> 
> I've added all packagers that I could track on CC, and am interested in
> their preferences and ideas.

The core part of this problem seems to be packagers for non-RPM based
platforms not knowing about the special things needing to be done by
GlusterFS packages.

This likely affects NetBSD, FreeBSD, (possibly OSX?), and others too.

The core of the answer is to have the info somewhere packagers can
find it.  A wiki page (well indexed) about "Special Things that
GlusterFS Packagers need to do" would be a suitable thing.

As others have suggested, a mailing list for packagers isn't a bad
idea.  It shouldn't replace the core info being in one place, but
it's a good way to communicate about developments for that info.

This is my pre-coffee thinking anyway. :)

+ Justin

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