Re: What can Debian do to provide complex applications to its users?
On Fri, Mar 09, 2018 at 02:07:19AM +0100, gregor herrmann wrote:
> On Thu, 08 Mar 2018 23:03:17 +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote:
>
> > The first question should always be if/how we can provide something that
> > is better than what is already available elsewhere.
>
> An answer to that question might often be: "because it integrates
> into a Debian system". -- This is also an answer to the proposal
> raised here some days ago about not being shy to promote third-party
> repositories; no objections from me in general, just the remark that
> most third-party .debs I've seen are of abysmal quality.
I wasn't thinking of third-party .debs or anything else that
is Debian specific.
npm or flatpak would be examples that I had in mind.
> So even if
> we can't provide a true real-debian all-DFSG-free
> non-embedded-code-copies etc. package in main, I think offering a
> .deb (or .vdeb or flatpak or whatever)
"Debian specific flatpak" would be wrong, a flatpak app
is supposed to work equally well on all distributions.
> in the spirit of contrib/non-free
> aka DFSG#5 would be a valuable service to users, as we can offer
> packagees that Just Work™ (as in: don't install files into absurd
> locations, don't require crazy manual update steps with scripts
> placed SomeWhere etc.)
"install files into absurd locations" doesn't even matter for solutions
like flatpat that containerize an app separated from the system and
other apps.
Regarding "as we can offer packagees that Just Work™", I do not
necessarily see us providing better packages than upstream here.
> > The worst case would be if we have to tell more frequently to users
> > "Please don't use the packages in our stable release." because they
> > are worse than alternatives.
>
> We might need an archive area which is independent of our release
> suites. I guess there's lots of software out there which doesn't
> align with our release cycle, fixes bugs only in "latest release"
> etc. -- but still works from anything between oldstable and
> unstable. While this is all a bit disgusting from our traditional
> Debian point of view, users would still be better of with installing
> a package from, say, "alien&weird", that works on a Debian system
> over having to fight with creative upstream packaging attempts or
> manual installations&updates.
Why would a Debian package from alien&weird be better than "npm install"?
Why would a Debian package from alien&weird be better than a flatpak
from alien&weird?
And it is hard to see the point why alien&weird should provide a Debian
packages when providing a flatpak would make the software built once
work equally well on all releases of all distributions, also avoiding
all the pesky differences like different versions of the same library
having slightly different behaviour.
And for our users, a Debian package where the postinst from alien&weird
runs as root and the proprietary software from alien&weird does not run
containerized is not a good option.
> Cheers,
> gregor
cu
Adrian
--
"Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
"Only a promise," Lao Er said.
Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed
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