Re: Fwd: Re: Why no Opera?
Dear Edward,
many thanks for joining in.
On Wednesday 05 September 2007 13:23:46 Edward Welbourne wrote:
> > Opera could offer an apt repository for the .deb
>
> We already do :-)
> Here's the line from my /etc/apt/sources.list:
>
> deb http://deb.opera.com/opera/ testing non-free
I was pointed to it by others on the list and have indicated it on this wiki
page http://wiki.debian.org/UnofficialRepositories
> There are two packages available (for each of several configurations):
> opera is the shared-linkage version, opera-static is the
> statically-linked version. The former comes in two flavours; .5 for
> sarge and .6 for etch onwards. Things older than sarge are the reason
> for the static version. With any luck, Claudio (one of the other
> parties to packager@opera.com) can add more detail on what's behind
> that ...
this sounds all very reasonable to me.
> > On Tuesday 28 August 2007 06:46:47 Bruce Sass wrote:
> >> On Mon August 27 2007 05:33:05 pm Romain Beauxis wrote:
> >> > Le Tuesday 28 August 2007 00:17:40 Bruce Sass, vous avez écrit :
> >> > > On Mon August 27 2007 04:05:24 pm Pierre Habouzit wrote:
> >> > > > And it's no way we will accept the statically linked version
> >> > > > in Debian.
> >>
> >> Of course, obviously---for software where there is a choice, but for
> >> software which can not be built from source because it is closed or not
> >> redistributable once modified (which seems to be the case with Opera),
> >> putting a statically linked version into the archive sounds like the
> >> correct solution.
>
> I'm confused. Pierre appears to be saying "static is bad", Bruce
> "closed must be static". We have both static and shared packages, so
> you can take your pick, but which is the one the official Debian
> repository wants ?
There are multiple views on this. Everyone is confused, the minimal confusion
is probably on your side since you can see the source. The
Non-Opera-Debianers can only guess about it all and remain confused. For
efficiency we want it all dynamic, for safety it is probably static.
> I should also note that the existing Opera packages have not been very
> lintian-compliant. The new 9.50 release (we recently released an
> alpha) shall deploy my re-write of the scripts that do packaging: this
> fixes many of the deficiencies you'll find in packages up to 9.23, but
> I'd greatly appreciate guidance on how to improve what 9.50 does !
The ultimate solution of course would be an Open Source release. Though you'd
certainly do that if you wanted to and others on this list probably will
remind you of this idea anyway. So I will be quiet about it :)
For a closed source release it would be lovely if you had a Debian developer
amongst your Opera developers who can upload packages to the distribution.
This way, he could make sure that all the LGPL libraries that you may be
shipping as part of your binary distribution appear as Debian packages
themselves. Together with the other DDs he would have ensure that those
libraries that are already in the distribution are working with Opera. And
finally, he could prepare binary uploads of your package for the non-free
section.
So, the Debian community would have someone (and sadly only one) who can
inspect your source and fix issues that arise. The benefit I see for Opera is
a further decreased footprint.
For an involvement of the community in the packaging of your latest versions I
do not see how this would be possible without any knowledge about how Opera
is working internally and about what libraries it uses. But this list is
certainly the right one for technical issues, be it for packages aiming at
your separate repository or for Debian's main one.
Best regards
Steffen
Reply to: