Re: Work-needing packages report for Sep 6, 2002
On Thu, 12 Sep 2002, Michael Stone wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 11, 2002 at 07:31:41PM +0000, Martin Wheeler wrote:
> >On Wed, 11 Sep 2002, Michael Stone wrote:
> >> Well, you've missed the distiction between "cohesive, quality
> >> distibution" and "collection of random crap".
> >
> >Not true.
>
> No, perfectly true. What he said is that nobody is forcing anyone to
> take care of packages. That's true in a sense, but debian (IMHO) aims to
> deliver a total high-quality package. Users shouldn't have to wonder
> whether a package they install from the stable distribution is
> well-maintained.
>
If it is clear that a package is unmaintained would that take care of this
argument? I suggested an unmaintained archive in a separate email.
> >There is no one-to-one correlation between 'maintained' and 'quality'; just as
> >there is no one-to-one correlation between 'unmaintained' and either 'random',
> >or 'crap'.
>
> You're the one bringing up those correlations. The correlation I pointed
> out is debian=="cohesive quality distribution". That implies that
> someone must look after every package. If a problem is discovered with a
> package it must be addressed. Yanking the package is an acceptable
> approach for unstable, but doesn't work as well for stable.
>
Yanking a package from the standard distribution is an acceptable approach
for unstable. Moving them to another archive accomplishes this
> Random crap is what you get when nobody takes responsibility for the
> overall quality of the distribution--which was the implication of the
> mail to which I responded.
>
An archive of unmaintained packages would allow people who want to bring
back a package to make better choices, decrease their work (.diff already
existing) and allow them to have a list of bugs that need to be fixed.
I personally as only a user have had quite a few packages disappear from the
unstable archive. Yes, stable often holds some of these packages, but
often these versions are older than what was in unstable. Not all packages
make it into stable even if they've been in unstable during several
releases. I'm happy there's a .deb repacking tool, but this is not enough
for me. I dislike loosing programs from my system and I like to have the
originals archived somewhere.
Besides packages I use disappearing from the archive, I worry about all the
programs that I didn't bother to select and save locally.
Is there any issue with saving unmaintained packages out of debian
/main/contrib/non-free? The only issues I can come up with are space,
bandwidth and legal issues. Bandwidth should not be a problem if
unmaintained packages are not used much (but still used) and packages with
legal problems can be dropped. Space is a problem that I have put out a
request for help.
Drew Daniels
I'm looking for work, if you can help see:
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~umdanie8
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