Fedora Rawhide Users Can Now Test The Experimental Zchunk Metadata Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Fedora Rawhide Users Can Now Test The Experimental Zchunk Metadata Support

Zchunk is the file format announced earlier this year for delivering good compression while being delta-friendly and based upon Zsync and Casync while compression handling is done by Zstandard...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Fedora-Rawhide-Test-Zchunk

[Candy]

How about fixing this regression in libsolv first ?

https://github.com/openSUSE/libsolv/issues/287

A couple of weeks ago this regresssion of libsolv version made it also into Fedora 28 breaking things.

[Anvil]

libsolv is shitbox. if Fedora could get rid of it they would as they dont really need it afaik. libdnf does all there depsolving .

afaik i think trying to get zchunck into RPM an possibly getting rid of DeltaRPM

[RahulSundaram]

How about fixing this regression in libsolv first ?

https://github.com/openSUSE/libsolv/issues/287

A couple of weeks ago this regresssion of libsolv version made it also into Fedora 28 breaking things.

You can't expect a volunteer contributor working on zchunk to drop their work and concentrate on your pet bug. People don't all have the same skillsets or interests and are not interchangeable like that.

[Candy]

You can't expect a volunteer contributor working on zchunk to drop their work and concentrate on your pet bug.

You are of course right!

But!

If such changes *and* other changes have a significant effect on how dnf operates, then yes! This is an issue. One of the Fedora rules says: "don't change user experiences" and this sentence is even more valid for stable Fedora releases.

So if you are going to change the behaviour how dnf interacts with packages e.g. enforcing re-installation of packages, then this is indeed something that violates your own rules - specially for stable Fedora releases. The issue has been introduced right after release of Fedora 29 (which even makes it invalid for user experiences for Fedora 29). The issue got filed in bugzilla and until now the developers haven't taken care of it. Even if it's just a one-liner of change.

So please forgive me if I sound like an ass here. But why do you people keep introducing new fancy dnf stuff *that no one besides the own developer* uses, while other issues are still left unattended ?

[You-]

The issue isnt whether that should be looked at/fixed, but whether it should be by *this* volunteer contributor that is working on a different part of dnf.

[RahulSundaram]

So please forgive me if I sound like an ass here. But why do you people keep introducing new fancy dnf stuff *that no one besides the own developer* uses, while other issues are still left unattended ?

In this case, this feature is considered widely desirable and the person contributing the feature has nothing to do with the bug you are talking about and very likely cannot merge fixes for it anyway. Even otherwise, we cannot tell a volunteer not to work on whatever fancy feature they see an interest in.

[Candy]

Even otherwise, we cannot tell a volunteer not to work on whatever fancy feature they see an interest in.

Don't let volunteers work on core components of Fedora! Or - more specific - components that will make it into RHEL sooner or later. This way you avoid messing up things.

[RahulSundaram]

Don't let volunteers work on core components of Fedora! Or - more specific - components that will make it into RHEL sooner or later. This way you avoid messing up things.

Sorry but that is a astoundingly silly thing to say. Volunteers have done amazing work on Fedora. It is an open source project with hundreds of volunteers. Just because they don't work on your pet bug doesn't mean the feature isn't very valuable to other people.

[Candy]

Sorry but that is a astoundingly silly thing to say. Volunteers have done amazing work on Fedora. It is an open source project with hundreds of volunteers. Just because they don't work on your pet bug doesn't mean the feature isn't very valuable to other people.

You can be sure that I am well aware of the situation that Fedora is based on volunteer work and that most volunteers are doing a great job! We've been using Fedora and RHEL products for many years now. I've tried to be specific on this single component that acts as a heart of package managing within Fedora. There is no alternative for it. Either it works as supposed or it doesn't.

This is not just a "pet" bug. This is a serious issue. An issue that slipped through the eyes of Fesco and made it into Fedora 28 breaking the user experience. But of course - you as a community manager - like to make it sound like this isn't anything specific.

Here the bug:

https://github.com/openSUSE/libsolv/issues/287

And here how it slipped through Fesco and made it *legally* to Fedora 28:
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/arch...OEO6ANNHZSYYO/

Not to mention that this broke our own workflow. So why bother with Zjunk, if dnf itself doesn't work correctly for weeks now. That's why I said that you shouldn't let volunteers work one something that might make it from Fedora to RHEL one day. Companies that rely on RHEL systems are not really open to such kind of experiments. They simply want their own infrastructure and components to work.