packaging-committee

#1440 document that there are better alternatives to alternatives?
Opened by decathorpe. Modified

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alternatives are old and creaky and don't work everywhere. alternatives exist (based on mechanisms in RPM and / or dnf, using virtual Provides and Requires, and package swapping).

Examples of the RPM based way:

  • sddm-wayland-* packages
  • fedora-release-identity-* packages
  • initial-setup-gui-wayland-* packages

The RPM based way has the major disadvantage of only one provider can be selected via installation at a time, and swapping is an "expensive" package management action.

It is done by creating some kind of virtual name that all alternatives Provides and Conflicts on:

Provides: alternative(foobar)
Conflicts: alternative(foobar)

(Note it doesn't matter what this is, as long as it isn't a real package name.)

Some example virtual names in use are:

  • sddm-greeter-displayserver
    • sddm-wayland-generic
    • sddm-wayland-plasma
    • sddm-wayland-miriway
  • fedora-release-identity
    • fedora-release-identity-kde
    • fedora-release-identity-lxqt
  • firstboot(gui-backend)
    • initial-setup-gui-wayland-generic
    • initial-setup-gui-wayland-plasma
    • initial-setup-gui-wayland-miriway
  • lxqt-wayland-session-default-compositor
    • lxqt-wayland-session-default-compositor-miriway

There may be more, but these should be good enough to illustrate the model.

The only ways to switch providers is to use DNF to do it, like so:

  • dnf swap sddm-wayland-generic sddm-wayland-miriway
  • dnf install --allowerasing lxqt-wayland-session-default-compositor-miriway
Edited by ngompa
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