[WBEL-devel] Re: How to get the RHEL Errata?

[Sebastian Welsh]

On Tue, 2003-11-25 at 17:25, John Morris wrote:
> I'm CC'ing this back into the list on the assumption others might want to 
> contribute.
> 
> On Mon, 24 Nov 2003, Tim Fournet wrote:
> 
> > One question I have is how will we keep the trademarked references and
> > images out of the errata RPMS? Is it possible to write a script that
> > will automatically remove them when rebuilding the SRPMS from Red Hat's
> > ftp server?
> 
> My plan is to make sure they get repatched before posting.  I'll let 
> others chime on on their plans.

Roughly how many packages have required modification so far? This may
suggest the amount of work required to maintain sync with RedHat errata.

Am I right in assuming that inserting a patch into the spec for each
encumbered package is the preferred approach? I expect in most cases the
original patch will retain compatibility with errata. 

IMHO, using a package-maintainer approach may make this easier to manage
in the long run, but I am unsure how keen people are for the
organisational overheads this would require. I would certainly be
willing to commit.

A longer-term concern of mine is the possibility that in the future, we
have no guarantee that the SRPM errata will be sufficient to generate a
complete OS. Playing the "if I were RedHat" thought experiment, I'd
consider introducing proprietal software to Enterprise Linux upon which
common components depended in order to reinforce my new sales model. I
respect RedHats right to grow a sustainable business, but really hope
that I am just being viciously creative :)

Seb