Re: Debian is not a "main distro"?

[Enrique Zanardi <ezanardi@ull.es>]

On Wed, Sep 30, 1998 at 02:49:38PM -0400, Steve Dunham wrote:
> Rob Browning <rlb@cs.utexas.edu> writes:
> 
> > Steve Dunham <dunham@cse.msu.edu> writes:
> > 
> > > In addition to the packager apparently being slower, and the
> > > unnecessary interaction, many Debian packages do a lot of unnecessary
> > > computation: recompiling elisp files 3 or 4 times, recompiling TeX
> > > formats, etc.

- slower: That will be fixed using binary databases.
- "unnecesary computation": Ian is currently working on that
  (implementing the "hooks" mechanism).
- "unnecesary interaction": Unattended installation is one of our
  long-term goals, but we still don't have a clear way to implement it.
  In the mean time, we should deprecate "too interactive" maintainer scripts.
  But our policy says exactly the opposite! (There's a paragraph
  suggesting that any script displaying vitally important information
  should wait for the user to press a key).

[...]
> I'd also really like to see our source package stuff fixed.  At the
> very least, I'd like to see support for multiple upstream tar files.
> (Multiple diff files would be nice too.)

Hint: Try the development version of dpkg-deb, the one by Klee Dienes. 
It has a really nice source package format. But the dpkg in there is broken,
and AFAIK none of the current dpkg "non-maintainers" is working on that
version.

--
Enrique Zanardi					   ezanardi@ull.es