Re: Cleanups before leaving the team
On 26/10/2013 18:37, Guillem Jover wrote:
> and that most packages in glibc-bsd are
> anyway being moved to use freebsd-glue,
Well, that's not completely accurate. I hope this misunderstanding is
not the reason you're leaving the team.
If you observe Build-Depends you'll see that none of the packages that
used libbsd two years ago have stopped using it. The purpose of
freebsd-glue is not to replace libbsd, but to provide a 100% compatible
glue environment for building FreeBSD sources. I'm not making this up,
it's in Description field for all to see.
Sometimes this means working in tandem with other libraries: libdb,
libedit... and most of all, libbsd. Yes, libbsd works and the code keeps
linking with it. Which is a fine deal IMO.
Sometimes this means importing or writing brand new code. But it doesn't
have to stay forever. If another library provides the same function with
the same API, I'm always happy to offload it. Unfortunately so far this
never happened, that I know of (if I'm wrong on this, please do point it
out).
Sometimes it means certain things, kludges of a kind you'll probably
find displeasing, such as
http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/glibc-bsd/trunk/freebsd-glue/include/linux/sysctl.h?revision=4718&view=markup
which nevertheless have been a practical necessity if you ever wanted to
reduce the (formerly) huge patchset in freebsd-{libs,utils,etc} in order
to make regular updates more manageable.
But this is not about criticizing your taste really. It's OK the way it
is, with libbsd being one thing and freebsd-glue being another. I don't
suffer from NIH. I don't take it personal. And I'm happy with things
that work as long as they keep working.
What I tend to grow displeased is with things that don't work and which
are supposed to work someday, but never actually do.
> I'd like to take it with me
> and maintain it outside of the team. The same goes for libmd, the
> difference being that this one has not been uploaded to Debian yet.
> Otherwise the situation might get a bit awkward.
What are your plans for libmd? Back in 2011 it became needed by
zfsutils. In fact it's being linked in statically ever since, because I
thought a libmd package was underway and I knew you had interest in
cleaning it up first. I didn't even mention it back then, as I didn't
want to bother you.
Turns out this didn't work, as you were bothered anyway, so I might as
well ask about it now.
> The only other remaining package for which I'm currently listed as
> co-maintainer in svn is posixtestsuite, which I've been maintaining
> alone for the past several years. I don't have a particular attachment
> to it, and if someone else wants to continue maintaining it through the
> team, I'll remove myself from the Uploaders, but if no one is going to
> step in, I'd be fine with maintaining it outside the team too, either
> way I don't really care much.
When I packaged posixtestsuite almost 10 years ago, I thought it'd turn
to be very useful, but ultimately it wasn't all that much. My mistake.
If nobody steps in, I would suggest removing it. But if you want to
maintain that, it's your call of course.
I don't mean to tell you what to do, but I'd very much rather have libmd
than posixtestsuite.
--
Robert Millan
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