[csw-maintainers] [policy] Re: feature patching, and naming

[Philip Brown]

On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 7:54 AM, Dagobert Michelsen <dam at opencsw.org> wrote:
>
>
> What you say is already the case, see adobereader. But it is not what the
> flag was used in the past: it indicated if a package was re-released
> with the same version but only "fixed" on either sparc or i386. This
> is IMHO unnecessary and confusing.

That is one viewpoint.
However, a different viewpoint, is that requiring users to re-download
the other side.. the "non-fixed" version... when exactly *nothing* has
changed in the "newer" package, is even more unneccessary.

Of the two viewpoints, I think that triggering thousands of
redownloads for no possible good, is worse than the slight odditity of
marking the "fixed" side specially.
Which is why we have historically supported this sort of thing, above
and beyond the benefit that the maintainer only has to compile and
reupload "half" the packages to be resubmitted.