[lsb-discuss] Who maintains RPM?
Darren Davis
ddavis at novell.com
Thu Aug 24 12:28:51 PDT 2006
Hello,
I found this posted on another mail list, but thought it would be very
relevant here.
Darren
> http://lwn.net/Articles/196523/
>
> [LWN subscriber-only content]
>
> RPM is an important piece of Linux infrastructure. It is the native
> package manager for a number of major distributions, including Red
> Hat's enterprise offerings, Fedora, and SUSE. The Linux Standard Base
> specification requires that all compliant systems offer RPM - even
> those which are built around a different package management system. If
> RPM does not work, the system is not generally manageable. So it may be
> a little surprising to learn that the current status and maintainership
> of RPM is unclear at best.
>
> Once upon a time, RPM was the "Red Hat Package Manager." In a bid to
> establish RPM as a wider standard - and, perhaps, to get some
> development help - Red Hat tried to turn RPM into a community project -
> rebranding it as the "RPM Package Manger" in the process. But core RPM
> development remained at Red Hat, under the care of an employee named
> Jeff Johnson. That, it would seem, is where the trouble starts.
>
> Back in early 2004, [1]an RPM bug report was filed. The reporting user
> had made a little mistake, in that he had tried to install a package on
> a system where /usr was mounted read-only. Needless to say, this
> operation did not work as intended - an outcome which the bug reporter
> could live with. This person, however, did think that it might have
> been better if RPM had not corrupted its internal database in the
> process of failing. He suggested that RPM should keep its internal
> records in order, even if the system administrator has requested
> something which cannot be done.
>
> The ensuing conversation - lasting for over two years - deserves to
> become a textbook example in how not to respond to bug reports. Mr.
> Johnson took the position that, since RPM was being asked to do
> something erroneous, its subsequent mangling of the package database
> was not a bug. Instead, it seems, this behavior should be seen as an
> appropriate consequence for having done something stupid. Mr. Johnson
> repeatedly closed the bug, stating his refusal to fix it. Numerous
> other participants in the discussion made it clear that they disagreed
> with this "resolution" of the bug, but nothing, it seemed, could
> convince the RPM maintainer to put in a fix.
>
> In February, 2006 - almost two years after the bug report had been
> entered - Mr. Johnson posted a one-line comment to the effect that
> read-only mounts were properly detected in RPM-4.4.5. This might seem
> like the end of the story, except for one little problem: Fedora
> currently ships version 4.4.2, and even the Fedora development
> repository has not gone beyond that. SUSE remains at 4.4.2, and the
> current RHEL offerings have rather older versions. Mr. Johnson has
> continued to make RPM releases, but the distributors are not picking
> them up. They are, instead, shipping an older version of this crucial
> tool, augmented with a rather hefty list of patches.
>
> Part of what is happening here is that Mr. Johnson is no longer a Red
> Hat employee, having been encouraged to pursue other opportunities. He
> does, however, continue to show up on the Red Hat bug tracker when RPM
> issues are being discussed; as [2]a current example shows, he does not
> appear to have adopted a friendlier attitude toward RPM users (or his
> former employer) over time. There has been talk on the mailing lists
> about removing his access to the bugzilla database - an action which
> may have occurred by now.
>
> Red Hat's Greg DeKoenigsberg, who has responsibility for the company's
> relations with the development community has [3]stood up and pointed
> out, however, that simply silencing one difficult personality will not
> address the real problem:
>
> When we fired jbj, we didn't have the courage to draw a line in the
> sand and say "we're taking upstream ownership of RPM back." Why not?
> Because we thought it would be difficult politically? Because we didn't
> want the responsibility anymore? Because nobody in management actually
> cared enough to think about the ramifications? I don't know.
>
> Fast forward a year plus, and here we are. We're in a position where we
> have, essentially, forked RPM -- and no one is willing to admit it. No
> one is willing to take ownership of what we've done.
>
> Perhaps jbj "owns" RPM, in its current incarnation, by default, because
> no one else is willing to touch it. That's fine. He can have it. But
> that is not what *we* are using.
>
> So, when Jeff Johnson walked out the door at Red Hat, he took RPM with
> him. Since then, few distributors have wanted to use his releases, but
> no other organized project around RPM has come into existence. For the
> purposes of the people using distributions from Red Hat and SUSE, RPM
> is essentially unmaintained.
>
> There has been no clear message to users about the state of RPM. Some
> Fedora users have asked, via [4]yet another bugzilla entry, for an
> update to Jeff Johnson's current release, but nobody has posted a
> definitive reason as to why that will not happen. But it does appear
> that there is no interest within Fedora to depend on Mr. Johnson for
> anything, much less an important piece of infrastructure, so Fedora
> appears unlikely to move to the newer releases.
>
> What Greg DeKoenigsberg has said - [5]backed up by Michael Tiemann - is
> that the time has come for Fedora and Red Hat to own up to what has
> happened and formalize the new status of RPM. The current situation,
> where RPM has been forked but nobody is saying so, will not lead to
> anything good in the long run. The new RPM - perhaps the "Red Hat
> Package Manager" yet again - needs to have its existence acknowledged
> and its maintainership made clear. Either that, or Red Hat and Fedora
> should acknowledge the current RPM maintainer and move toward rejoining
> with his version of the code. Until one of those things happen, there
> will continue to be a dark cloud of uncertainty surrounding a tool
> which is heavily depended upon by vast numbers of Linux users.
>
> (See also: the [6]the Fedora rpm-devel wiki page, which lists features
> found in the current RPM release but not in Fedora's version).
>
>
> References
>
> 1. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=119185
> 2. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=143301
> 3. http://lwn.net/Articles/196532/
> 4. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=174307
> 5. http://lwn.net/Articles/196533/
> 6. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/rpm-devel
>
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