Re: KDE3 - Debian/experimental distribution proposal (was: yes i am alive ;)
Moin Ralf!
Ralf Nolden wrote:
> well, as much as this would work out, someone has to do the work actually. And
> regarding the experimental distribution - that brings your work environment
> to a highly unstable state, not to speak about the packagers having to build
> the packages on this system.
The experimental distribution is designed for exactly this: Store
packages that are not yet suitable for unstable. Packages don't need
to be uber-unstable to be uploaded to experimental, though. It could
also be used as a staging area to store the packages before everything
is sorted out so they can be uploaded into unstable properly.
Another advantage of using experimental is that everything would
already be in the Debian archive: overrides, package names for the
BTS, files in the pool etc. pp. This would mean that these packages
could already use the Debian package infrastructure, even though they
are not yet part of unstable. However, I doubt that experimental is
autobuilt, so it'll require manual attention.
This will make it easer to upload all relevant packages into unstable
afterwards.
> Now, let's please be reasonable about what can be done easily and what is
> desireable. Have a quick look at the current state:
Please take into account that quick and easy solutions are often not
good and promising solutions. Going the proper path, however, sounds
much better to me and will probably be less painful for the future.
> The other thing is what version of Debian users want to run KDE on. I myself
This is a completely different story, unfortunately.
You'll have to separate two issues: unstable/sid and woody.
Let's talk about woody first. The woody distribution was released in
July and will stay stable until it will be removed from the Debian
servers and moved to the Debian archive. Updates will address only
security and very serious problems. KDE has no chance to get updated
in woody except for security concerns (which will happen). However,
no new version of KDE will be included in woody.
This is nothing to worry about. This ensures that the stable
distribution doesn't change too much during its lifetime. All
installations and systems will more or less be the same.
If you would like to provide newer KDE packages for woody, which would
probably be a benefit from a users perspective, you'll need to bypass
the Debian server. For this purpose, being able to add a line like
"deb http://debian.kde.org woody main" to apt.sources, would probably
the best and most logical solution (or switch the name to kde.debian.org/net).
Addressing unstable should be the long-term goal for all KDE packages,
since this will be the basis for the next stable distribution of
Debian, which will be released in the future. Once all problems are
sorted out, packages should be uploaded into the unstable
distribution.
Providing preliminary Debian packages on external resources will help
developing packages for unstable. Using the experimental distribution
of Debian will enable them to use the Debian infrastructure as well.
> My idea would be better to create a debian.kde.org website to collect all this
> information and to host a permanent official build on ftp.kde.org. That can
> be the releases as they are plus additional applications that are provided
> for those builds. We can sort those in into ftp if we like to, and that is
> the easiest way to provide people a one-liner for their sources.list to
> update regularly.
Having a native source for additional information, howtos, guidelines
etc. is always a benefit. If such documentation is rather static and
less of a moving target and also dedicated for end-users, it may be
worth considering the use of www.debian.org. This will
"automatically" add translations and is the native source for
information addressing Debian.
To conclude and since this mail is already quite long, from a core
developer's perspective I would like to see:
1. debian.kde.org or kde.debian.org store more recent packages for
woody for those who would like to run a more recent version than
the one which is supplied with woody. This could run on a
debian.org host (e.g. klecker) or on a kde.org host, and would be
an "unofficial packges source".
2. In order to provide new packages for the unstable distribution I'd
like to see the experimental distribution of Debian used, since
this enables using the entire infrastructure of Debian except for
the buildds.
3. Storing additional information on an easy to remember host like
debian.kde.org or kde.debian.org is always good. However, it
should probably be decided whether some information would also be
suited for www.debian.org.
Regards,
Joey
--
Every use of Linux is a proper use of Linux. -- Jon "Maddog" Hall
Please always Cc to me when replying to me on the lists.
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