Re: deb-make

[Christoph <debian@waterf.org>]

On Mon, 17 Feb 1997, Ian Jackson wrote:

> How did we manage to get into the situation where an arguably
> badly-designed piece of software became so quickly and with so little
> discussion wired into the guts of Debian's package management so
> deeply that we can't change it ?

Could you please be specific in what ways "debmake" is badly designed?

> I give maintainers warning now: debmake will not be supported
> indefinitely.  It will become obsolete some time in the next six
> months, and all packages which are now using debmake will have to be
> redone using a replacement scheme some time before then.

It would certainly be good if dpkg is finally beginning to be further
developed. The initial intends of debmake was to give input to what dpkg
needs to contain but it has grown far beyond that.

Most of the stuff debmake contains is what dpkg should have had a long
time ago.

> This will be no problem for `simple' packages, where the investment in
> getting them to work with debmake is small and the time required to do
> the same with the new tool will also be small.
> 
> For complex packages I _strongly_ recommend _not_ using debmake.

Complex packages have been done by debmake. Debmake allows overriding of
whatever you need to implement specialized functionality.

> I think its design and programming interface are poor, and can only be
> fixed incompatibly.  I think its implementation is poor, and that this
> is best fixed by having it rewritten by someone else.

Huh? The vote of no confidence? One thing I really enjoy about how
leaders in the Debian Project appreciate the work done by others.

> I do not intend to go it alone, as you suggest.  My design will be
> discussed here before implementation, as has always been my practice
> (as anyone who's been around here for a while will know).
> 
> Furtheremore, I am the Project member most knowledgeable about the
> package build process and the package management system.  I consider
> myself well-qualified and having standing to make decisions on these
> matters.

Ok. Are we back to "my ideas are right and will be implemented"?. Possibly
we wont have a choice which one has with most of the features of debmake.

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