FUDCon:Toronto 2009 Packaging Guidelines Hackfest

Overview
The Packaging:Guidelines are painful to navigate. For a new packager trying to figure out how to package, they aren't helpful. For reviewers trying to hit all the bases in a package review the information they need is scattered. We need to reorganize the content to make it easier to find the information that's relevant to your task.

Goal
To have a list of problems with the current layout and a plan for fixing it. A mockup of some of the present Packaging: content transitioned to the new organization for FPC to look at and give the go ahead at their next meeting.

Hackfest Organization

 * First portion devoted to identifying problems.
 * Needed: Packagers, Reviewers, FPC members
 * Also quick brainstorm of solutions
 * Fleshing out of solutions
 * Needed: Packagers, Reviewers, Docs folks, FPC members
 * Begin writing up the changes in a separate wiki hierarchy.
 * Needed: Docs folks, FPC members

People

 * Person to moderate (Toshio)
 * Person monitoring IRC/writing whiteboard notes to IRC (Toshio if no one else volunteers)
 * Docs folks -- to talk about possible solutions to the organizational problems we have
 * Wiki folks -- what services does mediawiki provide to aid in this?
 * Zikula folks -- What does the CMS add?

Equipment

 * Small room
 * Whiteboard

Issues
Please add any and all issues that you can think of here. At the hackfest we'll add to this and flesh it out with more information.

Too much information
Some Guidelines only apply to certain types of packages (python or java, fonts or web applications, etc). How do we organize this so you can find what you need for your package but know you can ignore the rest?

Potential Solutions

 * Reorganize around asking questions about what is being packaged. Start with Guidelines that need to be looked at for all packages.  Then ask the user about the package: Does it contain fonts?  Does it have a python module?  Is it a C library?  have different paths based on this.


 * Tagging/Categorization by users. Allow people using the Guidelines to tag the content as being applicable to certain situations.  then when you are reviewing something, you can find the guidelines used in those situations by using that category/tag.

Packaging:Guidelines is too long
There's a lot of Guidelines. Even just counting the Guidelines that are Generic to any package. How can we break the page up so people don't have to read the whole thing?

Not everything is linked logically
Most things are linked from the Packaging:Guidelines page but not everything is present there or if it is, may be linked from one section when it applies to multiple sections.

Packaging:ReviewGuidelines is not complete
There's just too much stuff in Packaging:Guidelines to make the Packaging:ReviewGuidelines checklist comprehensive without overloading people.

FESCo and Packaging Guidelines Disunion
FESCo and Legal have criteria for whether something can be packaged in Fedora. It's not apparent what those are from the Packaging Guidelines. FESCo also has certain workflow policies that are not apparent.

Relevant pages/policies:
 * Fedora is all free software
 * []
 * Forbidden items
 * Legal:Main
 * Package Review Process
 * From EPEL: EPEL_incompatible_upgrades_policy
 * [|Package Review Status]
 * Packaging_tricks

Potential Solutions

 * Make the entry into the Packaging Guidelines be something in FESCo/maintainer space. It can reference the Policies that FESCo and legal have and point people at the Packaging Guidelines.
 * Revamp the Package Review Process as the entry point to Packaging and Reviewing.