Blanket ports exclusion needs discussion

[wayland]

I'd argue that the sections of "ports" that contain RPM spec files should be included in the releases. Currently, "ports" is listed in MANIFEST.SKIP. I'd argue that the following should be included in releases:

- fedora - suse - mandriva

There may be others, but I'm not talking about them.

My reason for wanting this is so that it is easy for users to build an RPM of a release, which is what I personally do.

[wayland]

Ok, since there's been no discussion, I've made a patch that excludes everything except the three ports mentioned.

[wayland]

Due to a difference in philosophy about how a tarball should be turned into an RPM, Allison has rejected this patch. Allison's opinion (quoted from an e-mail; hopefully not too much out of context):

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"The ports directory shouldn't be included in the tarball. It's just storage for the spec files from various distributions. That is, when various distributions create packaging scripts, etc, we ask them if we can store a copy of those files back in the Parrot repo. It's good safety in case one of the distro package maintainers disappears and someone else needs to pick it up (which has happened before)."

"But, packagers do their work after the release, and it's common to make an updated package from the same tarball if distro patches need to be added. So old spec files included in the tarball are generally wrong, and just clutter the packager has to write over".

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My philosophy (and that of some others, I think), on the other hand, is to have one RPM spec file that works everywhere, and with the current release, and to prepare it with the release. This philosophy has been rejected in earlier tickets, but I have trouble keeping Allison's philosophy in my head. But I agree that since Allison is the core developer, and I'm just a drop-in, Allison's opinion takes precedence over mine (not sure about others). I hope this doesn't come across as upset or anything; perpetually confused, maybe, though :).