Re: where do NEW packages go?
On May 18, Wolfgang Jährling wrote:
> Adam Heath <doogie@debian.org> wrote:
> > hurd does not exist alone in the universe, it exists alongside debian.
>
> True. But for most people in Debian, the Hurd doesn't exist at all and
> they "don't feel like caring about the Hurd". That is not only my
> subjective impression, but also what Debian developers said in the past
> (and some did behave accordingly). I would love to see the Hurd people
> and Debian people cooperate, but like Jeroen (and others as well), I
> have given up any hope and don't think that Debian will ever change in
> the necessary ways, as we were even told by people that they are
> unwilling to understand the Hurd-related issues.
At least some of the resistance people perceive is due to two things:
1. Properly doing a lot of things that need to be done for the Hurd
(and other non-Linux-based ports) to fit well in Debian is effort that
is almost directly orthogonal to the effort to get another Debian
release out for Linux. Marcus Brinkmann's proposal for removing the
Architecture concept and folding it into dependencies is a very good
idea, for example, but that doesn't get KDE 3, GNOME 2 or XFree86
4.2.0 (to name three major packages that aren't in woody) into
woody+1, especially when the Hurd port probably won't be ready for 2-3
more cycles.
Perhaps what needs to be done there is to implement those changes and
use them in the Hurd port, then show the dpkg team that "yes, this
works, and here's a plan to transition to it fully for woody+2 or +3"
without breaking stuff that depends on Architecture making sense
(dpkg, probably apt, probably other things). That may require doing
it outside the Debian infrastructure for a while, or at least away
from the Debian archive. Even "simple" stuff, like the FHS moves and
allowing bz2 for source packages, requires a transition period.
Now, if people are refusing patches that don't break Debian policy,
that's something that needs to be taken up with the tech committee.
And if people think we need to relax the FHS for the Hurd, they need
to take that up with policy or the FHS group.
2. Gratuitously offensive behavior on both sides. This may be more
the result of a lot of Hurd developers being involved from an
ideological standpoint, while Debian developers have historically been
more pragmatic (or at least less dogmatic). For better or worse,
people filter one's perceptions on one thing through their perceptions
of others: it's the classic Overfiend issue, in that many can't
believe OF is a good developer because he is somewhat abrasive to
certain people. I don't know what the solution to that is, offhand,
but casting aspersions either way won't help.
Chris
--
Chris Lawrence <chris@lordsutch.com> - http://www.lordsutch.com/chris/
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