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Winding down my Debian involvement

michael.stapelberg.ch

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Re: Winding down my Debian involvement

#91

Post by Arkanosis »

jcoffland wrote: post #66

I've been using Debian for over 10 years and I still love it as a user. But as a developer, I find it extremely frustrating. I've several times attempted to figure out how to package my open-source projects [1] [2] for Debian but the process is a nightmare. As I understand it, I first have to find someone with appropriate privileges to mentor me. I should be able to just submit a potential package for review. Then th…

> there is a ton of documentation on creating packages but which 300 page guide is the right one to use is unclear

So true. There seems like there are competing packaging approaches, some claiming others are outdated while themselves say the opposite.

I've been willing to package a few of my open-source projects as well for almost a year, and out of frustration, I've ended up building my .deb packages manually and hosting them on my own apt repository. In the meantime, I've published a few packages on PPAs (for Ubuntu) and on AUR (for ArchLinux), and it's been as easy as it could have been.

Given I use Debian exclusively on my servers, it feels like a missed opportunity to me (not that I think my own projects are so much valuable to others, but I'd package a lot more stuff if it was clear how to do it well).

Re: Winding down my Debian involvement

#92

Post by josteink »

asveikau wrote: post #62
nextos wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like Debian, but I agree it's become too slow and bureaucratic. Sadly, like most big organizations, it is hard to implement changes from inside. In my opinion, most Debian's issues stem from a centralized imperative package manager where all packages need to be carefully kept in sync for things to work. Moving to something like Nix would greatly simplify development. This is far from a new idea. In fact, it was qui…

> it's become too slow and bureaucratic. When I first used Debian in the 90s it had a reputation for being slow and bureaucratic.

And unlike most distros which were around back then, Debian is still here today, so it must be good for something.

That said, I agree anything Debian (and thus Ubuntu too) and FSF feels awkwardly baroque to work with these days.

Old email-based systems, bickering over politics and minor issues rather than the subject at hand, for weeks or months... and no standard CI?!?

With all that I too find myself spending my time contributing elsewhere.

It’s a shame as these 2 organizations acts as a fundament for sooo many things I rely on daily, but I just can’t bother.

Re: Winding down my Debian involvement

#93

Post by coleifer »

So some guy realizes that the vast resources and top-down direction available at large corporations don't translate to a huge open-source project (which itself is compromised of tons of open-source projects)? And it took him 10 years to realize this?

Seriously though, I'm amazed at how well Debian just works. And I know it's because enough people are willing to put up with these types of frustrations. Thanks for the hard work.

Re: Winding down my Debian involvement

#94

Post by bamboozled »

billsix wrote: post #69
jcoffland wrote: post #66

I've been using Debian for over 10 years and I still love it as a user. But as a developer, I find it extremely frustrating. I've several times attempted to figure out how to package my open-source projects [1] [2] for Debian but the process is a nightmare. As I understand it, I first have to find someone with appropriate privileges to mentor me. I should be able to just submit a potential package for review. Then th…

Agreed, I've tried and failed to make Debian packages, and have no idea how to proceed. In contrast, with Gentoo and their documentation, it was straightforward for me to make my own additional, separate repo, look at other ebuilds to see how packaging works, and have everything just work. https://github.com/billsix/billsix-portage I submit ebuilds to Gentoo itself if I think others would benefit. As far as I can tel…

NixOS was also easy to get started with, I really like it !

Re: Winding down my Debian involvement

#95

Post by Boulth »

> I have more ideas that seem really compelling to me, but, based on how my previous projects have been going, I don’t think I can make any of these ideas happen within the Debian project.

Interesting article. I had a chance of asking two distributions about some particular feature (making it easier to get GPG keys of developers).

The first one I contacted was Gentoo: they quickly CCed my email to relevant people, discussed the matter between themselves and deployed the change in a week.

Then I contacted Debian about the same thing. The email was basically identical. But the reply was largely negative, complaining about details and openly avoiding work. The entire interaction reminded me of large corporations where any change is met with resistance for resistance sake.

(I use Arch btw.)

Re: Winding down my Debian involvement

#96

Post by thom »

robocat wrote: post #48
bnegreve wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For next time: dpkg -S path/to/file gives the the name of the package containing a file, and dpkg -s package-name gives you the name of the maintainer.

Thanks! I suspect with that I can probably find the repository, so that I can check whether the comment has already been fixed, then I can work out how to submit a patch or bug.

Usually worth just following this workflow:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs

Re: Winding down my Debian involvement

#97

Post by yrro »

robocat wrote: post #17

I noticed a mistake in a comment in a default file in the /etc/ directory - pretty certain the file is part of Debian (although this was on Ubuntu). I thought I would try to fix it. Two hours googling later and I couldn't even work out who the maintainer was. I don't like eating other people's time, but I even tried using IRC.

reportbug --file /etc/foobar

Re: Winding down my Debian involvement

#98

Post by endgame »

bamboozled wrote: post #94
billsix wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, I've tried and failed to make Debian packages, and have no idea how to proceed. In contrast, with Gentoo and their documentation, it was straightforward for me to make my own additional, separate repo, look at other ebuilds to see how packaging works, and have everything just work. https://github.com/billsix/billsix-portage I submit ebuilds to Gentoo itself if I think others would benefit. As far as I can tel…

NixOS was also easy to get started with, I really like it !

Agreed, Gentoo and Nixpkgs both have really helpful people onboarding new packagers.
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