Re: Alternative: Source-Centric Approach [w/code]

[Wouter Verhelst <wouter@debian.org>]

Op di, 15-03-2005 te 11:25 -0600, schreef John Goerzen:
> As I have been reading the discussions about the SCC proposal for
> etch, it seems that these are the main problems:
> 
> 1) Difficulty with, and speed of, buildd systems
> 
> 2) Difficulty of syncing testing across all archs given #1
> 
> 3) Difficulty getting security releases out in time, given slow archs
> 
> 4) Space constraints on mirrors
> 
> I'm throwing out a different idea, and I'm backing it up with code.  I
> have thought about it some, maybe there are huge holes, but let's see.
> 
> I propose that we split things along these lines: binary+source (B+S)
> archs and source-only (SO) archs.
[...long detailed explanation of how this would work in practice
snipped...]

I don't think this is a good idea. One of Debian's key selling points is
the fact that you /don't/ have to wait for something to build before
being able to use it. We're not Gentoo[1]; many of our users come to
Debian because they want a community-developed, binary-based
distribution.

Changing that would change what Debian is, too much.

Also it wouldn't help on slower architectures. People usually decline
installing NetBSD on m68k (even if that's possible) when it takes two
weeks to make the system useful, simply because everything needs to be
compiled manually.

[1] this is not meant pejoratively; I'm have tried Gentoo in the past
and am quite sure it's a great distribution, but it has different goals.

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