Policy when dependencies break on updates?

[Orcan Ogetbil]

> 
> In livna I now and then after a while simply went forwarded
> and just 
> fixed the problem without waiting for the maintainer. Like
> I fixed the 
> xmms-mp3 problem there (xmms-mp3 hasn't had a real
> owner there, so I 
> could just do it directly) a few days ago with a updated
> spec file I got 
> from Paul (the xmms maintainer in Fedora). I forwarded it
> to Xavier (who 
> maintains xmms-mp3 for RPM Fusion), but afaics he
> didn't commit it for 
> RPM Fusion yet (maybe I should have told him more about the
> backgrounds, 
> but I was in a rush...).
> 
> But simply fixing a issue like that often might have side
> effects 
> someone that is not really familiar with the package
> doesn't know about. 
> Sometimes those are that bad that it might be better to
> leave things 
> broken until the package maintainer (or someone else that
> is familiar 
> with the package) has a proper (interim-) solution.
> 
I understand. But we shouldn't forget that all such issues will build up towards the reputation of the repository in user's mind, and in turn, towards the reputation of Fedora.

> So each of those problems need to be fixed differently.
> Maybe we can 
> work out policies to handle those situations more efficient
> in the 
> future, but I'm not sure if that really is worth the
> work. I'd say for 
> now we just wait and look how things work out.
> 
Yes, let have things settled first; but in the future a warn-the-maintainer mechanism as was suggested will surely smoothen things out.

I just wanted to brainstorm about an issue that I found important but I also know that people are busy with other important things. It was my 2 cents.

Peace,
-oget