Re: [gentoo-dev] DistroWatch and Gentoo packages: status quo and future

["Jesús Guerrero" <i92guboj@terra.es>]

On Sat, 12 Sep 2009 01:02:44 +0200, Sebastian Pipping
<webmaster@hartwork.org> wrote:
> Hello there!
> 
> 
> Among other information the Gentoo page at DistroWatch [1] displays a
> table on about 200 selected packages [2] and how up to date Gentoo is
> per package.  I assume that DistroWatch is still one of the first places
> people go to get a feeling for a Distro they heard about, besides
> Wikpedia and ${distro}.org.

Seriously, I doubt that the average Gentoo user comes from Distrowatch.
Gentoo is born from a necessity which is very different from the usual
binary distro. Gentoo has never been about fame or marketing.

> The freshness of these 200 packages have influence on how people
> perceive Gentoo on DistroWatch.  While the tree as a whole is what we
> should keep as up to date as possible keeping these 200 packages (list
> further down) up to date can therefore be of particular importance.
> 
> From a quick look at the table these packages seem to need extra care in
> Gentoo:
> 
>   cups (1.4.0)     1.3.11  <-- latest in Gentoo unstable/testing
>   koffice (2.0.2)  1.6.3
>   mysql (5.1.38)   5.0.84
>   perl (5.10.1)    5.8.8
>   php (5.3.0)      5.2.10
>   samba (3.4.1)    3.3.7
> 
> 
> Packages not found in Gentoo that DistroWatch monitors across discros
are:
> 
>   apt
>   synaptic
>     .. Debian stuff, that Gentoo does not have packaged
> 
>   apache
>   mod_ssl
>     .. Apache 1.x seems gone from Gentoo (I suppose security)
> 
>   openjdk
>     .. Not packaged in Gentoo, no idea why
> 
>   checkinstall
>   Miro
>     .. Not in official tree (yet?), available through an Overlay
> 
>   xmms
>     .. Removed for security reasons, available through an Overlay
> 
> Maybe we should move Miro to the main tree?

Most Gentoo users will have no problem to use overlays as they need
them. If we had more developers we could as maintain more packages,
as simple as that.

Besides that, if you want some new version, you are free to use 
bugs.gentoo.org to submit a bug, version bump, or whatever.

-- 
Jesús Guerrero