I want to suggest we create and maintain a document describing
architectural decisions of rpm5.org. The document should collect a
digest of inputs regarding important or frequently discussed topics on
rpm-devel which require ending up in a decision where to go next (not
necessarily forever). Those decisions should reflect consensus and/or
commitment previously gathered on the list. The architectural decision
would then stay in force while the inputs leading to the decision remain
the same. The goal is to guide developers where to go and drive users'
expectations. Without any rules, we run risk of wasting precious
brainpower with useless discussions and creating ping/pong commit mess
etc. Finally, I'd like to see some stochastic development replaced by a
little bit of engineering.

To be more precise:
- the document should be in the repository,
  maybe ARCHITECTURE or docs/architecture

- one decision I'd like to see is whether rpm5.org
  is going to support BDB, SQLITE, both, others etc.

- another one will be a discussion of how rpm5.org
  uses release identification and signification

- basically the document will correlate with our roadmap,
  but it also includes the reasons that led to decisions

I'm not in favor of paperwork but I expect this to be valuable.

What say ye? 

-- 
http://thomas.lotterer.net