Re: When does a derivative become a derivative? Whonix integration into Debian?
Paul Wise:
> On Sun, Dec 15, 2013 at 11:33 AM, adrelanos wrote:
>
>> with my Whonix hat on, I am wondering if Whonix actually is a derivative
>> of Debian or if I and Whonix users are just another kind of Debian users.
>
> So far Whonix appears to be mostly developed outside Debian with
> separate infrastructure and so on. Personally I consider Whonix to be
> a derivative.
I see.
>> Does that rule, that derivative's [Whonix] users should not post Debian
>> BTS really need to be enforced?
>
> Have you encountered people complaining about this?
No. I was only following Derivatives Guidelines.
https://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/Guidelines#Bug_reports
I will try that then.
> In any case almost
> all Whonix bugs should be reproducible on plain Debian systems so they
> should be valid and accepted bugs.
Yes. Could Derivatives Guidelines be changed to reflect that?
>> Whonix would just be a special brand of Debian.
>
> The terminology we use for that is a "Debian Pure Blend".
>
> https://wiki.debian.org/DebianPureBlends
> http://blends.debian.org/
> http://blends.debian.org/blends/
Interesting. Looks like a lot to read. I'll do that during the next days
and consider it.
Well, Whonix is packaged already. Just not sure you like the way it's
packaged. Would it be accepted for a blend? I think, at the moment the
only missing pieces are a meta package called "whonix-gateway" and one
"whonix-workstation" which simply pulls our other meta/files/postinst.d
packages. That way, one could enter "sudo apt-get install
whonix-gateway" and could transform a standard Debian install into a
Whonix-Gateway.
Could you comment in meanwhile on our debian/control file? [1]
(Why do we depend on package x? Comments are here. [2])
Would probably be better if Whonix was split into many smaller packages.
Things like sdwdate [3] (which is an NTP alternative) would be better in
separate packages and maybe even be useful for general Debian users.
We're also dropping a few scripts in /etc/profile.d [4], since I am not
aware of any other way to implement that functionality. Is that against
debian/blends policy? If this isn't the right place, what would be the
correct place to ask about such policy questions?
> Please note that none of the Debian Pure Blends are integrated very
> well into Debian yet. They each have metapackages in the archive but
> aren't advertised well on the main website nor in the Debian installer
> and there are no Debian live/cloud images of them.
>> I'd be interested to see Debian VM images for qemu, Virtual Box, etc.
>> build on Debian build servers along with live iso's. (Just standard
>> Debian install.)
> That would definitely be interesting, the problem is that Debian
> doesn't currently have a proper mechanism for creating generic/OEM
> preinstalled images, our existing cloud/live images do
> post-debootstrap hacks. I posted a couple of things about this
> recently:
>
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2013/12/msg00046.html
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2011/07/msg00694.html
> https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleInstalls
That shouldn't be an issue for a Whonix pure blend. (not pre-installing
OpenSSH)
>> Is that realistic? Would you be interested in any of this or even
>> willing to help in packaging Whonix for Debian and bootstrapping Debian
>> VM builds?
>
> I would definitely like to see this happen,
Cool.
> I can't really get
> involved in more projects though.
I can definitely understand that. I would like to do more projects
myself. Was asking in general.
[1] https://github.com/Whonix/Whonix/blob/master/debian/control
[2] https://github.com/Whonix/Whonix/tree/master/development
[3]
https://github.com/Whonix/Whonix/blob/master/whonix_shared/usr/bin/sdwdate
[4] https://github.com/Whonix/Whonix/tree/master/whonix_shared/etc/profile.d
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