Re: Go (golang) packaging, part 2
On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 12:38:16PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Using Debian packages is a *means*, not an *end*. Sometimes in these
> discussions I think people lose sight of the fact that, at the end of the
> day, the goal is not to construct an elegantly consistent system composed
> of theoretically pure components. That's a *preference*, but there's
> something that system is supposed to be *doing*, and we will do what we
> need to do in order to make the system functional.
And in particular, where a problem cannot be solved in pure Debian, I don't
want Debian to interfere with the bit of the solution that lives outside of
its domain. That may include not attempting to package/patch/alter/adjust
upstream systems like Go that have a different philosophical approach. The
worst case scenario IMHO is some people invest a lot of time to make the
Debianized-Go stuff quite divergent from upstream, people's expectations of
how things behave in Go-land are broken when they access Go-via-Debian, the
job is never quite complete and so we get extra bugs, and a new upstream
community relationship is marred. This is a much worse outcome than not
attempting to package Go at all, IMHO.
I guess I'd quite like the boundaries of responsibility to be very clear,
when I'm forced to have such boundaries.
Reply to: