Packaging Hurd translators for Debian (was: Source repositories, unionmount code)

[Thomas Schwinge-9]

Hello!

On Sat, Oct 24, 2009 at 07:56:30AM +0200, olafBuddenhagen@... wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 10:16:15AM +0200, Thomas Schwinge wrote:
> > On Mon, Sep 07, 2009 at 01:53:08AM +0200, olafBuddenhagen@...
> > wrote:
> > > On Sun, Sep 06, 2009 at 02:30:46PM +0300, Sergiu Ivanov wrote:
> > > > I'm rather inclined to consider that shipping unionfs and nsmux
> > > > with LiveCDs and QEMU images is not an imperative to encourage
> > > > their testing.  Potential users could just as well download the
> > > > code or clone the repositories locally.
> > >
> > > Yes, they could. But it's a *considerable* barrier. In practice, it
> > > simply means that hardly anybody will do it, so it's left to rot --
> > > just like all the stuff in hurd-extras...
> >
> > Part of this is simply a packaging problem -- that is, that these
> > translators are in fact not packaged for Debian.  Can't someone simply
> > do this eventually?
>
> Perhaps someone will *eventually*, and then the situation would be
> somewhat different indeed. (Assuming the packages get installed by
> default.)

Debian's Suggests or Recommends mechanism ought to be used for that.

> But that's not what we have now. And we have interesting new translators
> that want to be first class citizens *now*, not eventually...

So, scaling this up, the workaround you suggest is to include every pice
of software that you / I / others deem useful in some way into the Hurd
package?  That doesn't make too much sense; there is a reason that
software is split into separate packages...

How about instead actively looking for someone to do this small Debian
packaging work?  Perhaps we could even ask on some Debian beginners'
mailing list if there is a (yet unknown) person who wants to do it for
us, sponsored by Michael, Guillem, Samuel, etc.?


Regards,
 Thomas

[olafBuddenhagen]

Hi,

On Sun, Nov 08, 2009 at 10:36:16AM +0100, Thomas Schwinge wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 24, 2009 at 07:56:30AM +0200, olafBuddenhagen@...
> wrote:

> > (Assuming the packages get installed by default.)
>
> Debian's Suggests or Recommends mechanism ought to be used for that.

Suggests don't get pulled in automatically; so they aren't terribly
useful most of the time...

Recommends might be somewhat more helpful. However, as the hurd package
is already there the moment a new Hurd installation is created, I'm not
sure Recommends of the hurd package would ever get pulled in
automatically either?...

> > But that's not what we have now. And we have interesting new
> > translators that want to be first class citizens *now*, not
> > eventually...
>
> So, scaling this up, the workaround you suggest is to include every
> pice of software that you / I / others deem useful in some way into
> the Hurd package?

No, that's not what I'm suggesting. The fact that we obviously can't put
the whole system in a single package, doesn't automatically mean that
it's not useful to put certain consistent parts of the system in a
single package.

> How about instead actively looking for someone to do this small Debian
> packaging work?  Perhaps we could even ask on some Debian beginners'
> mailing list if there is a (yet unknown) person who wants to do it for
> us, sponsored by Michael, Guillem, Samuel, etc.?

Good idea... But it doesn't change my position on this :-)

-antrik-


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