Re: [gentoo-dev] Stuff that makes people mad

[Chris Gianelloni <wolf31o2@gentoo.org>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2976 bytes --]

On Fri, 2004-05-21 at 12:59, John Nilsson wrote:
> When I emphasized "NEED" I didn't mean the official requirement I menat
> the practical/technical requirement.
> 
> I meant: Can we engineer a solution to the problem removing the need for
> maintainers but still meeting the requirements?

No.  One of the requirements is that someone is responsible for that
piece of software and what it does on YOUR system.  Would you prefer we
just arbitrarily assign out responsibility for packages?  I vote that
YOU get to take over OpenOffice, KDE, Gnome, GCC, and glibc.  I'll take
bash.  ;]

> I view an ebuild as a kind of hack at the moment. Ebuilds solve the
> problem that open source software packages does not meet the
> requirements of their users (distributors).

Actually, LFS has proven that the software packages are pretty much OK
amongst themselves, it is when you start bringing in numerous variables
of versions, revisions, configure options, etc. that you start to get
into the complexity that ebuilds try to relieve.  Nobody is forcing you
to use emerge.  Remember that.

> Ebuilds provide a uniform interface for configuring and installing.
> Fair, does that need one maintainer per package?

Yes.  Though I know that personally, I probably maintain 20-30
packages.  As a member of the 2 herds I am in (games/livecd), I would
venture that number is closer to 200-300.  Did I mention that there's
only 4 of us (3 active) in games?  The livecd herd at this time is just
me.

> Ebuild provide metadata for dependencies. Is this really the
> responsibility of Gentoo or even Portage? I say, move that to the source
> packager.

I wouldn't mind seeing this done upstream.  I'm not sure how it would be
done, but it would definitely make all of our lives much easier.

> Ebuilds provide an "install shield" so that installed files can be
> tracked, protected, removed, updated. Would it be correct to patch this
> functionality into install(1) instead?

...or RPM, or apt, or yum, or pkgtools, or...

As you see, there are many competing packaging systems.  What you
propose would require everyone to agree on one.  If you've learned
anything about Linux, it is that everyone is out to build a better
mousetrap.

> Ebuilds makes sure that files go to the right places. A broken install
> system is a broken install system. Patch automake/autoconf their purpose
> is to make portability a breeze, why do we have another in house layer
> on top?

Pretty much read above.

What you propose really is for Linux to unify.  There would be no need
for Gentoo, or Debian, or Red Hat.  It would all just be Linux.  It
would all work the same and it would all feel the same.

Well, sir.  I wish you luck in the endeavour.  Until then, I'll be here
working on ebuilds and trying to make what we have today better.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Developer
Games/LiveCD Teams
Gentoo Linux

Is your power animal a penguin?

[-- Attachment #2: This is a digitally signed message part --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]