Re: LSB bastards
On Sun, 1 Jul 2001, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
>
> On Sun, 1 Jul 2001, Joseph Carter wrote:
>
> > Did you consider that the dpkg/apt coders were part of the decision to use
> > rpm for LSB? That's right, I believe that was discussed at least once
> > right on this list. Why? Well, of all the dists out there, 2/3 of them
>
> Just for the record I objected quite strongly and provided what I thought
> was a reasonable alternative to what they have currently specified. Their
> response was to create a bureaucratic box to contain everyone who
> disagreed <sigh>
As a founding committee member representing Debian, I argued that neither
RPM nor .deb formats should be specified in a system compatibility
standard. The package format has no bearing on the compatibility issues
that are important. I was able to hold ground for only a short time before
the subject came up again. This time the counter argument was "The third
party vendors who are to be served by this standard demand a single format
for distribution of Linux software." and since RPM is the only
commercially available package manager, it is the defacto standard. Since
we are not here to create new technology, this is the best solution...
It became clear at that time that I was going to have little effect on the
final outcome, and the succeeding history has proven my point.
After my surgery, I was quietly replaced as the Testing Coordinator, and,
although I tried to help with some command spec writing, my contributions
to that effort have gone to zero in the last few months.
As far as I know, Wichert is the only Debian member actively involved in
the committee activities.
>
> Debian will probably never comply with the spec as it is written. We will
> be lucky if alien gets us enough compliance for the real-world
> situations..
While I disagree on all points other than package manager (most of the
spec is pretty easy to support as it is POSIX and FHS based for the most
part) I agree with the feelings expressed.
The worst part of this alien problem is the indefinite number of scripts
that RPM expects to run at installation time. The spec at one time
recognized this deficit (it still may, but I haven't checked) and declared
a limited subset of scripts that should be used by the VAR package. If the
vendor isn't a dedicated RPM shop, with pre-concieved notions about
package management, and are willing to follow the LSB spec on these
issues, their package should shoe-horn into a Debian system and work
properly, but it's still a toss up.
There was, and supposedly still exists, a group composed of .deb and .rpm
experts who were charged with producing a binary package format that
satisfies the needs of RPM as well as dpkg and friends. I have not heard
from this group in quite some time...
>
> I also think it's likely that we are screwed from this point on, as
> any future specs are likely to be at least compatible with this one.
There are several other areas that will gross out most of the developers
much more than the package manager. I mean, after all, the RPM tools are
free software, and we can package them, with modifications to make them
play nice with a Debian system. The spec is about the package format, not
the package manager.
None of this answers the more general question: "Are we going to try to be
LSB compliant."
To answer that question I think we need to look at the library
specifications. There is much there to hate in addition to the package
file format. Commands and Utilities is pretty easy, as we supply pretty
much all that the spec requires.
I suspect that we will be compliant where we can, just to satisfy our
Social Contract and provide for the needs of our users.
Waiting is,
Dwarf
--
_-_-_-_-_- Author of "Dwarf's Guide to Debian GNU/Linux" _-_-_-_-_-_-
_- _-
_- aka Dale Scheetz Phone: 1 (850) 656-9769 _-
_- Flexible Software 11000 McCrackin Road _-
_- e-mail: dwarf@polaris.net Tallahassee, FL 32308 _-
_- _-
_-_-_-_-_- Released under the GNU Free Documentation License _-_-_-_-
available at: http://www.polaris.net/~dwarf/
Reply to: