Paul Wise wrote:
Currently the raspbian project doesn't build images, (mpthompson has built a few in the past and I'm considering building them in the future but we don't right now).My question was if the standard Raspbian (not Debian) sources.list (and images containing that sources.list) should include the RPi repository so that Raspbian users can install them easily. I was in no way suggesting that these packages be included in the default Raspbian images, just that they be easily accessible to Raspbian users so that those users don't have a worse experience than the official install.
I'd imagine the majority of raspbian images out there do have the raspberry pi foundation repository in their sources.list (after all they will need the firmware if they want the thing to boot) but it's ultimately up to whoever creates the image to decide what goes in their sources.list. Also note that while raspbian is primerally targetted at the Pi I do not intend it to be exclusive to the Pi, raspbian images for other devices would obviously not want to include the raspberry pi foundation repostory. We did look at (and succeed in) running raspbian on the via APC, we just gave up due to horrible software support (iirc you need binary only kernel modules to make even dumb framebuffer graphics work)
I did intend to have an area in the raspbian repository for pi specific packages (and it exists, it's just empty right now). I was hoping to work with the raspberry pi foundation to make an orderly transition from their monolithic kernel/firmware package to a more debian like approach but the trouble is that everyone over there has other things higher up their priority list right now.