Fedora Core/Extras/Alternatives, blueprints and reality

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Date: Sun, 31 Oct 2004 15:16:31 +0100
To: For users of Fedora Core releases <fedora-list@redhat.com>

On Thu, Oct 28, 2004 at 06:19:48PM +0100, D. D. Brierton wrote:
> On Thu, 2004-10-28 at 18:00, Ryan McDougall wrote:
>
> > Ok I really think I messed some stuff up when I updated the system
> > using yum and those other repositries.
>
> The trick to using the repositories is to understand the difference
> between Fedora Core, Fedora Extras and Fedora Alternatives. (I haven't
> seen those terms used in a while, maybe the terminology has been dropped
> but the distinction still holds.)

The definitions below are very misleading, check with

    http://fedora.redhat.com/participate/terminology.html

(which are also misleading ;).

Unfortunately there haven't been any further finer grained definitions
of differences between Core and Extras (especially defining when a
package is more suitable for one or the other), but the intention was
to have multiple Extras repositories dedicated to different topics
(the web site quotes "Fedora Extras High Performance Computing" or
similar). Currently it is often mixed with fedora.us definitions.

Alternatives are supposed to be replacing parts of Core. Technically
these are the updates Red Hat is providing, as well as patched/fixed
packages at other repos.

In fact any exiting repo today is a more or less mixture of an
"Extras" and "Alternatives" repo.

In general I would say that some of the definitions placed a year ago
on the web have failed to be accepted, especially
"Alternatives". Probably for good reason IMO, as enforcing a
categorization upon existing structures w/o first analysing them is
A Bad Thing (TM).

Anyway the actual situation is:

Fedora Core:
  Red Hat (vendor) packaging

Fedora Extras/Third Party:
  Community packaging without any specific charter

Fedora Legacy:
  Community packaging with a charter of supporting Fedora/Red Hat
  releases beyond offcial EOL (effectively extending EOL)

Fedora Alternatives:
  Born dead, may it RIP. ;)

> Fedora Core
> This, obviously, is the core set of packages released by Red Hat
> and the Fedora Community.
>
> Fedora Extras
> This is the set of packages which are not part of Fedora Core
> but are popular enough to be packaged up specifically to work
> with Fedora Core.
>
> Fedora Extras is split into two:
> * Fedora.us which contains the Extras packages suitable
> for distribution in the USA, and
> * Livna.org which contains packages such as MP3 codecs
> which are probably fine for use anywhere else in the
> world but may be legally suspect for use in the USA.
>
> Fedora Alternatives
> This is the loose affiliation of repositories such as Freshrpms,
> DAG, ATrpms, NewRPMs, etc., which not only package software not
> found in Fedora Core or Fedora Extras but may also package
> *alternative*, i.e. newer or differently compiled, versions of
> software found in Fedora Core or Fedora Extras. Care should be
> taken in installing packages from Fedora Alternatives (i.e. you
> should try to understand what you are doing).

-- 
Axel.Thimm at ATrpms.net

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