Packaging Committee

The Fedora Packaging Committee determines the packaging guidelines for Fedora projects. It also approves exemptions the various guidelines where required, as well as exemptions to the package review process.

The FPC is an independent subcommittee of the Fedora Steering Committee (FESCo).

Meetings and Discussions

The Fedora Packaging Committee currently meets every Thursday at 17:00 UTC (16:00 UTC during US daylight saving time), in #fedora-meeting-1^[?] on the freenode.net. You can also find the meeting in the Fedora Calendar.

For the meeting chair: process to run the meeting: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging_Committee_Meeting_Process

Minutes

Meeting minutes are kept at fpc meetbot archive (pre 2010-06: Packaging:Minutes).

Discussions

Discussion and decisions can also take place in the packaging mailing list. The mailing list is open to the public. To subscribe or view the archives, go to http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/packaging/.

Members

• James Antill (geppetto)
• Mat Booth (mbooth)
• Jon Ciesla (limburgher)
• Ralf Corsepius (racor)
• Xavier Lamien (laxathom)
• Dominik Mierzejewski (rathann)
• Orion Poplawski (orionp)
• Thomas Spura (tomspur)
• Jason Tibbitts (tibbs)

Agenda

The issues the committee is set to discuss are available in pagure. An agenda is generally mailed to the devel mailing list a day before the meeting.

Bringing Issues to the Committee

While you may be able to catch one of the committee members on IRC (generally in #fedora-devel^[?]) or via discussion on the packaging mailing list, it is generally better for you to file a ticket. You can do so in our trac instance.

When filing tickets for any reason, please be as explicit as possible. Provide more information than you think you might need. If asking about a specific piece of software, provide the URL instead of making the committee search. Instead of just linking to a mailing list thread, provide a brief summary. Everyone is busy, and complete and reasoned questions or submissions will always fare better.

Guideline Change Procedure

How a Packaging Draft becomes a Fedora Packaging Guideline, in six easy steps!

Step One: Draft Guidelines

All Fedora Packaging Guidelines changes start out as Draft documents. Any Fedora contributor may propose new or amended Packaging Guidelines. To create a new Draft, add a new page on the wiki with the Packaging guidelines drafts. Once you're happy with the Draft, open an issue here with a link to the draft. Draft authors are highly encouraged to announce the draft on the packaging mailing list.

Note that when creating a draft, please start from a fresh copy of the guidelines page (by simply clicking "View Source" and copying the relevant source to a new page) and then make your edits on top of that. This enables us to simply look at a diff between what you started with and the final proposal.

Step Two: Packaging Committee Review

The Packaging Committee will consider items on the fpc trac instance in its weekly meetings and on the mailing list. The meetings and mailing list are open to the public, and Fedora contributors are invited and encouraged to participate (especially if you are a Draft author).

Step Three: Packaging Committee Vote

The Packaging Committee votes on Drafts. A majority quorum is required for a Draft to be ratified by the FPC. Currently, five yes votes are required for Draft approval. Approved drafts are listed in the Action Items section of the GuidelinesTodo table and marked "ratify".

Step Four: FESCo Ratification (optional)

FPC approved drafts normally go into effect immediately after a positive vote. However, provision is made for any FPC member to request explicit FESCo review of the changes after the vote is taken. This allows things that are controversial to be explicitly reviewed by a second set of people before being pushed live. In this case, FESCo needs to review the decision and can either approve it or request changes be made before the draft goes live.

Step Five: Writeup

Once a draft is approved, the Draft text is added to the Fedora Packaging Guidelines. The Draft wiki page may be moved to a new location in the Packaging: namespace or the information may be merged with existing Guideline pages and the draft page moved into archives. The fpc trac ticket is closed with information about where the new Guideline lives.

Step Six: Announcement

As the final step, the new Packaging Guidelines (or changes to the existing Guidelines) are announced on the fedora-maintainers and devel mailing lists.

Ticket updates

In the interests of keeping the process moving for all contributors, please supply information requested by FPC members in your trac ticket in a timely manner. If outstanding information requested in a trac ticket is not provided within two weeks, the ticket may be closed due to inactivity.

Bootstrapping Exception Procedure

If you need an exception to the "No pre-built binaries" guideline as indicated here then please file a ticket in the FPC trac. Use "Bootstrap Exception" as the component and explain the nature of the software and its build process. If you expect that you will need to bootstrap your package periodically, please indicate that. FPC will generally grant a blanket exception for software which warrants it.

Review Process Exemption Procedure

The FPC can grant exceptions to the normal package review process. This may happen, for instance, if a large number of similar packages are being submitted at once or if a package is being updated to a new major version while the old version is being kept in the distribution with a different name.

Just file a ticket here, set the component to "Review Process Exception" and explain (with detail) why you're requesting the exemption and the committee will consider it in the next meeting.