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20 years as a Debian maintainer

suihkulokki.blogspot.com

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Re: 20 years as a Debian maintainer

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Don't bundle third-party dependencies. For security (and for better documentation of the true dependency graph) distros often must go through extra trouble to unbundle third-party libraries when present. Some project even add their own custom patches to their bundled source. Resist the urge to do this. If any of the dependencies aren't currently packaged in Debian, how would one follow this guideline?

In addition to what rleigh said, you could package them for Debian :) https://mentors.debian.net/intro-maintainers

That's a fascinating link.

If I wanted to package my third-party dependency, the first thing I would do is "learn about personal interests of sponsors" and see if my third-party dependency and a sponsor's interests intersect. There's a link to a page describing the sponsoring process, where apparently I'd file a bug against a "sponsorship-requests" pseudo-package and then, I guess, wait.

Next (or perhaps concurrently) I'd file a separate "Intent to package" bug against the "Work-Needing and Prospective Packages" pseudo-package. There's a whole page about WNPP and format guidelines for submitting said bug using the "reportbug" tool. Those format guidelines are longer than the JSON spec.

Then I'd still need to make the package, after all. That link you gave lists five important reference materials, one of which is said to be "must read" and has 12 chapters and 7 appendices. There's also a "New Maintainer's Guide".

Then I need to publish my package. There's an account to sign up for. Plus I'll need to create, keep up with and sign stuff with a GPG key because uploads are http/ftp only.

Once that is finished I apparently get an email response. Finally... I am done!

Now it's time to find a sponsor.

There's a whole section on what to do if you can't find a sponsor. The first is to follow up on the WNPP request I was supposed to make six paragraphs ago. The other is apparently to look up sponsors in a sponsor search-engine on the Debian website and bother them.

Then there's another section on actually getting the package into debian through an ftpmaster. (Both the sponsor and the non-Debian Debian-package maintainer are ominously reminded here that the ftpmaster's _opinion_ on inclusion is binding.)

And then maintaining it.

I would be, for the life-time of my application, maintaining the Debian package of one of my third-party dependencies. This, in response to my query about how to be a good upstream citizen in the hopes that downstream maintainers can more easily package my application! :)

Re: 20 years as a Debian maintainer

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mind if I ask what, in particular, is making you move?

I'm not rxlim, but considering that the release after Wheezy - Jessie - introduced systemd as the default init systemd, it's not hard to guess.

Wheezy was my last one as well.

I fully migrated my personal laptop to FreeBSD (as TrueOS) a few weeks ago, after using it as my second OS at home.

And because I need Linux for work, I migrated to Devuan on my workstation, as I need to use Ansible and Docker in a stable way as part of my DevOps job.

Re: 20 years as a Debian maintainer

#123
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it under-rated? Perhaps its marketing isn't as strong, but it's the "father" of a lot of distros today. Personally when I want a server distro, I still go with Debian. Simple and solid. No nonsense.

Personally, I feel like Ubuntu gets a lot more attention, perhaps more on the client-side. Sometimes, the foundational work Debian provides isn't fully acknowledged.

Yeah, Ubuntu probably is the best-marketed distro today. And I agree that Debian probably doesn't get the praise it deserves – IMO the nicest things about Ubuntu come from Debian.

Re: 20 years as a Debian maintainer

#124
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But Windows has done the same. I guess ACPI is a mess. Of course, you don't mention macOS. I never had issues with suspend on any of my MBPs. If I did, it turned out that was my battery got empty, and the few times this happened I did think about suspend failing. Turned out I was wrong.

Good for you. I've never owned a MBP, and this thread is about switching from Debian to FreeBSD.

You completely missed the point. If ACPI is a mess, how come macOS doesn't suffer from the issue?

Re: 20 years as a Debian maintainer

#125
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good for you. I've never owned a MBP, and this thread is about switching from Debian to FreeBSD.

You completely missed the point. If ACPI is a mess, how come macOS doesn't suffer from the issue?

Look, I'm sure the macOS implementation of ACPI is great.

I said "I GUESS ACPI is a mess", because most implementations I've used (and I've only used it; I know nothing low-level about it at all) have had some problem or another.

How wrong of me not to have any experience with your preferred platform, and leave it out of the discussion.

Re: 20 years as a Debian maintainer

#126
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You completely missed the point. If ACPI is a mess, how come macOS doesn't suffer from the issue?

Look, I'm sure the macOS implementation of ACPI is great. I said "I GUESS ACPI is a mess", because most implementations I've used (and I've only used it; I know nothing low-level about it at all) have had some problem or another. How wrong of me not to have any experience with your preferred platform, and leave it out of the discussion.

That is why I told the reader (anecdotal) evidence which suggests the contrary.

> How wrong of me not to have any experience with your preferred platform, and leave it out of the discussion.

No need to feel so overly offended.

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