Re: mentors.debian.net reloading
On Sun, Oct 28, 2007 at 11:19:14AM +0100, Ondrej Certik wrote:
> > times, but when I found some of the people here so nice and helpful, I
> > could learn so much. The learning curve is quite long, and I still have
> > so many things to learn.
> >
> > That vote system goes totally on the opposite direction, and
> > blacklisting or discouraging people that are trying to learn is really
> > not a good thing, IMHO.
>
> Yes, I feel the same.
I think I also second that. It's like the number of signatures on the
PGP key doesn't mean someone is more skilled (socially and or
technically) than others. Those people are just attending more KSPs (or
even not - in the worst case). :)
> First, and second - I, and I think it's the same with others, I am
> doing the packaging especially because I want to fix the problem for
> myself. But when I am doing it, of course I want to fix it for others
> too (because that's easy, when I already fixed it for myself). So I
> want to package a new program and use it now - but that's the argument
> for PPA, which I think you agree with.
Definitely.
> > I'm scared by the thought that there will be a dozen PPAs that end-users
> > will use to get their software from third-party sources. IMHO good
> > packages should go officially into Debian. And bad packages should go to
> > hell. Sponsorship might be a problem sometimes which may be solved by
> > the "Debian Maintainer" status which should allow you to upload packages
> > into Debian. I would hate to read on mailing lists "the version of
> > 'kaffeine' in Debian is outdated. There is a newer version in PPA X
> > that you could use. Or you use the version in PPA Y which is even newer
> > but I hard it's broken". (shiver)
>
> Why not? It's like with Ubuntu - it also has some newer packages.
Really? I'm not doing much with Ubuntu. How are they doing that?
> I think more options are good, not bad. The official archive is the
> unstable one - and that's the only one that is supported. And to
> ensure high quality of it, I like this whole sponsorship thing, the
> NEW queue and everything.
>
> But also, as the user, I want to use immediatelly the packages that I
> create, and also that other people create. I want to use them
> unofficially, until the package hits unstable, which can take up to 2
> months.
Ah, okay, I get it now. You want to provide binary packages for software
that is not yet accepted in Debian. Interesting idea. Like a
not-even-yet-in-unstable repository. I fear that it might lead to
end-users complaining that Debian sucks though because they don't know
what they are doing and that PPAs are without the responsibility of the
"actual" Debian project. I sometimes find myself taking other people's
source packages and use them because they are not yet available in
"unstable" although they come from an ITP or RFS that is two years old
and the package is really in a bad condition. Couldn't hurt to offer
that. If you know what you are doing it might be better to get an
inofficial and partly broken package and fix that instead of starting
with nothing.
> > > Basically I think all of those and similar problems can be solved, if
> > > we want to.
> >
> > I'm absolutely on your side. Just not for the binary package part which
> > scares me.
>
> The debian mentors site doesn't have to provide the binary part. But I
> want some site, that will provide it.
I've thought about all the needs, the arguments, the idea of PPAs and
what mentors is about and should be. My current idea is to work on
something similar but more low-level than PPAs that could be generic
enough to be a basis both for binary archives and for mentors. Perhaps
that's idiotic because the needs look a bit different. PPAs would
currently be there to publish packages and build them. mentors.d.n would
be there to get source packages sponsored. But there is a common ground
that both software would need:
- storage for source (and optionally: binary) packages
- QA checks when uploading source packages
- social interaction (e.g. notification of new uploads of a certain
package - could be interesting for end-users as well as sponsors)
I'm positive that this is similar to what you were proposing all the
time. :) Currently I'm trying to get all the features together and see
how it can be implemented while staying as generic as possible. Let's
see what that leads to. I hope it will finally be something that can be
used for other services, too. Perhaps even for PPA-like services.
I'm thinking a similar way (using a Python web framework - although a
different one). So at least I expect to come up with a Python module
that helps dealing with Debian source packages and repositories. I hoped
that python-apt would help but last time I looked it was only there to
deal with the APT cache. I spent a lot of time parsing control files
correctly and will tidy that up and publish that properly at least.
> But anyway, I prefer to do something rather than to talk, so I bought
> a virtualserver with unlimited bandwidth and I am going to try to
> build the debian PPA, just for myself at the beginning. And I'll see
> how it works.
Good idea. You'll probably be able to show something off much quicker
than me still philosophing about mentors.d.n V3.0. :) I'm curious but
could imagine that ppa.debian.net (or mypackages.debian.net or
inofficial.debian.net or whatever) might become a useful resource.
> And the buildbots with Goneri and when we have it, we
> can talk, if this service is useful or not for Debian and wheter it
> should be more official, or not. If we decide it's rather not good for
> Debian, I'll just create access for people that ask me to.
Having more services for Debian maintainers and users won't hurt. The
worst thing that can happen is that only few people use it.
Cheers
Christoph
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