Re: Pre-BOF CDD ideas

[Free Ekanayaka <free@agnula.org>]

>>>>> On Sun, 30 May 2004 12:26:14 -0300, Cosimo Alfarano <kalfa@debian.org> said:

    Cosimo> The main problem of this is that lots of people working on
    Cosimo> CDDs are not DD, so it leads to problems uploading
    Cosimo> packages, and such an infrastrcuture would work only if
    Cosimo> CDD are able to use official Debian packages and push
    Cosimo> patches to maintainers, without having to fork.

I fit perfectly in this situation. I'm  not (yet) a DD (my application
is hanging somewhere on Debian  servers..), but I  have lots of things
related to aGNUla/DeMuDi that  I'd like to  upload and maintain. I set
up my own repository at http://apt.agnula.org/demudi/, but I'd like to
avoid that.

In  Valencia  we agreed   that this list  should  act  as link between
unofficial CDD  developers and Debian, so  if the DDs on debian-custom
could help non-DDs uploading their packages that would be great.

    >> package-xy.  So I see no big practical use for this package
    >> flavours because the above seems to be stupid and needs more
    >> maintenance than trying to go with sane configuration
    >> solutions.

    Cosimo> I'm not speaking about configuration issues, but about
    Cosimo> patches needed and now wanted to be applied, for example.

    Cosimo> If the package will be uploaded in an external repository
    Cosimo> it breaks completly the idea of a virtualized
    Cosimo> testing/stable distro per CDD (and the 100% Debian idea).

IMHO  having  different flavours    of  the same   package  should  be
considered   an extreme  solution,   when   no  other  alternative  is
available. As a general rule I think  complexity should be kept at the
minimum  possible value, and  having 2 packages  for the same software
means that  you have to double the  work. Just think when new upstream
source comes out.

I  most cases I  think  that a patch can   be included in the original
package   without  hurt,   by  introducing   a    command  line   flag
(e.g. /usr/bin/myprog --my-patch) or similar switches.

bye,

free