[Kolab-devel] Fedora packaging

[Jeroen van Meeuwen (Kolab Systems)]

On 2014-01-21 13:06, Karel Volný wrote:
> Hi,
> 

Hi Karel,

> Recently, I have tried to set up Kolab on one of my machines, and
> while trying to fight the issues, I just had to say to myself stop,
> and try to do that systematically, to the benefit of other users and
> not just to hack my system.
> 
> So, the first thing I wonder about is why Kolab is not in the
> distribution repositories of Fedora?
> 

No particular reason other than the lengthy review process (for the 
packages we already have submitted).

> I can understand some benefits from the developers' side, but as an
> user, I'd prefer not having to mess with external repositories. For
> example, right now there is a real problem with it that Fedora 20 got
> released about a month ago, yet the install guide refers to F18 and
> F19 only, and there doesn't seem to be anything newer in OBS.
> 

Fedora 20 packages are, at the moment, only being built for 
Kolab:Development. If somebody feels inclined to also have Kolab 3.1 
available for Fedora 20, all one needs to do is ask.

In the OBS, I need to unlock Kolab 3.1 though, in order to have those 
packages built for Fedora 20 :/

> While I don't want to just come here and say "leave OBS, move to
> Fedora proper!", I'd like to know -
> 
> * what are the exact benefits for the Kolab upstream to release own
> rpm packages, instead of releasing only sources and leaving upon
> distributions to pack them (while there doesn't have to be any gap in
> between upstream and the distribution, same people could do the job, I
> know for example Jeroen maintained *a lot* of Fedora packages ...)
> 

Just waiting for the distribution('s community) to package our software 
takes too long.

Participating in every single distribution is too much effort (as was 
building for each distribution separately, which is one problem using 
the OBS solves) for any one given person -- it would need to be a 
growing, collaborative effort.

These are not the main reasons to provide packages ourselves, though. As 
you may be aware, bumping an .so-name is usually a no-go in (otherwise 
"stable") distributions -- I use the term "stable" lightly, because it's 
stable by policy in Fedora more so than it is stable by bug-fixes only 
in (for example) Debian.

On the other hand, we have a release schedule (where's that roadmap / 
agenda again?) that we can barely manage to complete (see the level of 
incompleteness of docs.kolab.org).

Long story short, when we release Kolab $x, we want to release something 
people can install and play with (not flawless, nor picture-perfect, nor 
without bugs) on their favorite distribution (version).

Hence, if we release Kolab 3.2 with Fedora 21, while Kolab 3.3 would end 
up in Fedora 22, none of the other distributions are on anywhere near 
the same cycle.

> * what are the possible reasons for not including Kolab in Fedora
> proper - license issues, whatever ...
> 

No, no, no and no. We are *F*ree Software or I'd fire my own ass and 
feel very depressed at failing in life's ambition.

> As I see four review requests opened in Red Hat's Bugzilla for Kolab
> components, I suppose the idea of having Kolab in Fedora is not
> considered bad, but there isn't enough manpower?
> 

There's certainly not enough manpower. It's not like I've been slacking 
off since February last year [1] ;-)

[1] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=812526

> I'm willing to help in that case; if an effort to get Kolab into
> Fedora proper already started, could someone give me pointers where I
> could be most useful?
> 

The packages that have been submitted are largely stand-alone. Kolab 
requires them but they do not in and by themselves require Kolab (though 
admittedly roundcubemail-plugins-kolab is largely about kolab, it can 
use the SQL driver for the calendar plugin and tasklist so forth).

The packages I believe need to be included in Fedora are:

   http://obs.kolabsys.com:82/Kolab:/Development/Fedora_20/src/

not including:

   - cyrus-imapd (I can commit that myself, but the version in Fedora is 
good too),
   - libkolab, libkolabxml (already in Fedora, we just need a more recent 
version -- note that KDE builds against this, and we are an .so-name 
bump ahead).

Kind regards,

Jeroen van Meeuwen

-- 
Systems Architect, Kolab Systems AG

e: vanmeeuwen at kolabsys.com
m: +44 74 2516 3817
w: http://www.kolabsys.com

pgp: 9342 BF08