hi guys,
I'm new on the list so apologies in advance if any of this
is covering old ground.
I prepared the RPM package of FG that's up on the FG site.
If Curt agrees it's wothwhile, then I'd like to
submit FlightGear as an official Fedora project package(*1).
This will broaden the visibility of and access to FlightGear
by the Fedora Linux community. It will reduce the likelihood
of any package conflict and dependency problems. It will also
enforce a worthwhile quality control discipline on the packaging.
As part of this, it occurs to me that FG would be better
as a modular framework of packages, rather than one monolithic package.
I'd like peoples' impressions of this idea.
Current situation
As it stands, the RPM package file is 75MB. Installed,
the package takes up about 187MB. The base package
has about 50 aircraft, taking on average about 2MB each.
It comes with a single default scenery set of about 5MB(?).
It comes with about 10MB of documentation.
Proposal
I was thinking along the lines of having a package
breakdown along the following lines.
flightgear-core
flightgear-locale-w130n30
flightgear-aircraft-p51d
flightgear-aircraft-747
<etc for all other aircraft>
flightgear-docs
flightgear-devel (for aircraft or scenery developers)
Obviously this breakdown into packages would not
necessarily have any upstream implications on Curt's
original pristine source arrangements.
The aims of such a package breakdown would be to:
* make it easier for users to get new locales
and aircraft;
* make it easier for users to upgrade the
core program without having the get the whole lot again;
* make it easier for developers to create and
distribute new locales and aircraft;
* provide that people only get the bits they need;
* make all but the core package architecture
independant (simplifying arrangements for other
Fedora architectures);
* make the elements separately upgradable
(within obvious limits);
* provide a modular basis for downstream enhancements,
such as a GUI FlightGear Component Console (a point-and-
click tool to load or upgrade aircraft and locales,
backended by a Yum or Apt repository).
A related aim would be to have common RPM arrangements
for all RPM Linux distros, using LSB principles where
possible. So if you're reading this and maintain
the package for {Connectiva,Mandrake,SuSE} please get
in touch. It would be great if we could have a team
approach.
Comments sought.
*1. That's fedora.us, not fedora.redhat.com. There
is no likelihood of FlightGear getting into the
Fedora Core distribution.
*2. I am not doing this in any official Red Hat
capacity.
regards
--
G. Richard Keech Chief Technology Architect
Red Hat Asia-Pacific [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Melbourne Australia http://people.redhat.com/rkeech
+61-419-036-463 mobile +61-3-9370-5611 fax
Legal: http://apac.redhat.com/disclaimer
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