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Maintainers Matter: The case against upstream packaging

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Re: Maintainers Matter: The case against upstream packaging

#21

Post by tobias3 »

kalessin wrote: post #18

While I agree with a lot of this as well, I feel like downstream packaging has a lot of issues. I'm working on a project (licensed under the GPLv3) and I have decided to be my own maintainer, i.e: building and distributing packaged versions of my project all by myself: 1. my project is young and unknown, I have no choice but to package it myself (I really like AUR by the way); 2. it lets me write and maintain step-by…

According to OP the maintainer fairies will come and package your project!

It doesn't even need a Makefile. They will create one for you.

(They need to package the 3870 other requested projects first, though https://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/requested )

Re: Maintainers Matter: The case against upstream packaging

#22

Post by coldtea »

tremon wrote: post #13
guardiangod wrote: post #11

Preface: 1. I use Arch Linux for my desktop and I like it. 2. I hate docker's repository systems (and other upstream packaging) But this article writer sure is putting the maintainers on a pedestal. More fundamentally, the maintainer is the primary line of defence and interaction between users and developers. Maintainers shield developers from uninformed users, allowing the devs to write software with less support ov…

The maintainers actively tried to sabotage his attempts to tell people to upgrade Ah, poor maintainer. Releasing software with a self-destruct timer is not an acceptable way to "tell people to upgrade".

No, but it's an effective way to say "fk you" to stubborn/lazy/backwards maintainers and/or distros who wont update.

Re: Maintainers Matter: The case against upstream packaging

#23

Post by ramblenode »

davexunit wrote: post #3

I agree with a lot of this. GNU/Linux distros are going down a very dangerous path with Snappy, Docker, Flatpak, Atomic, etc. I think a lot of this is responding to the fact that traditional systems package managers are quite bad by today's standards. They are imperative (no atomic transactions), use global state (/usr), and require root privileges. Snappy and co. take the "fuck it, I'm out" approach of bundling the…

Snappy, Docker et al. are the newest beasts in the evolution of packaging solutions. Nix and Guix decided evolution was too slow and to skip ahead an epoch or two.

Re: Maintainers Matter: The case against upstream packaging

#24

Post by keenerd »

kalessin wrote: post #18

While I agree with a lot of this as well, I feel like downstream packaging has a lot of issues. I'm working on a project (licensed under the GPLv3) and I have decided to be my own maintainer, i.e: building and distributing packaged versions of my project all by myself: 1. my project is young and unknown, I have no choice but to package it myself (I really like AUR by the way); 2. it lets me write and maintain step-by…

I presume you mean lightsd. Nifty stuff. What do you think of Suse's OBS? I believe you're squarely in its target audience.

And hats off to you for going the extra mile for your project! Your PKGBUILD even looks quite good. Would you like some assistance in writing a -git pkgbuild for people who want to try the absolute newest commit?

Re: Maintainers Matter: The case against upstream packaging

#25

Post by tiziano88 »

Personally I think Nix (https://nixos.org/nix/) does this right: packages are easy to install and upgrade for users, and developers and maintainers can easily create and update them. And if someone does not like the default collection of packages, it is as easy as starting one from scratch, or forking the existing one on GitHub, but at least it doesn't require reinventing the entire system.

Re: Maintainers Matter: The case against upstream packaging

#26

Post by keenerd »

rodgerd wrote: post #15

Linux has never had crap bundled? I guess the author forgot Canonical's "shopping lens" debacle, which was fully as sleazy as any ask toolbar bundling nonsense.

Canonical is a special case. They are just as much an ISV as a distribution. Conflicts of interest are going to arise.

Re: Maintainers Matter: The case against upstream packaging

#28

Post by jsizz »

drewcrawford wrote: post #12

I feel like this article is sort of attacking a straw man. > The promise: Sandboxing makes you immune to bad ISVs. The reality: It protects you from some things and not others. Well yeah, but the same could be said of maintainers. Maintainers let things through all the time, and sometimes they cause problems (hello, Debian weak keys). The reality is a bit complicated, and it boils down to something boring like: if th…

> sometimes they cause problems (hello, Debian weak keys).

> until recently nobody was packaging Chromium for example.

To name one example, SlackBuilds.org has had Chromium since 2010, although admittedly that's not so long ago as the Debian weak key cockup, which was 2006.

Maybe your examples could use an upgrade to the latest stable version.

Re: Maintainers Matter: The case against upstream packaging

#29

Post by pavanky »

drewcrawford wrote: post #12

I feel like this article is sort of attacking a straw man. > The promise: Sandboxing makes you immune to bad ISVs. The reality: It protects you from some things and not others. Well yeah, but the same could be said of maintainers. Maintainers let things through all the time, and sometimes they cause problems (hello, Debian weak keys). The reality is a bit complicated, and it boils down to something boring like: if th…

> until recently nobody was packaging Chromium for example.

How recent is "recently" ? Only Fedora and it's downstream distros do not ship Chromium. Everyone else has been packaging it for a few years now.

Re: Maintainers Matter: The case against upstream packaging

#30

Post by rodgerd »

johnny22 wrote: post #27
rodgerd wrote: post #15

Linux has never had crap bundled? I guess the author forgot Canonical's "shopping lens" debacle, which was fully as sleazy as any ask toolbar bundling nonsense.

that's not the kind of bundling people are talking about.

Did you even read the article? That's exactly the kind of thing the author claims distribution maintainers protect users from.
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