Re: Consensus Call: Do We Want to Require or Recommend DH; comments by 2019-06-16
On 5/27/19 6:29 AM, Andreas Tille wrote:
> On Sun, May 26, 2019 at 07:28:55PM +0200, Vincent Bernat wrote:
>>> We "uphold this reputation" by maintaining many packages, which is
>>> good.
>>
>> Do we? I am now using nix to get packages for stuff not in Debian. Our
>> package count is artificially inflated by *-perl packages, golang-*
>> packages which may not be present in some other distributions. But for
>> some ecosystems, we are severely behind. We may argue we are better on
>> some metrics, but this has nothing to do with the fact we have so many
>> ways to build a package.
>
> Some Debian Med people are concerned about the droping usage of Debian
> Med packages since people prefer BioConda[1] over it. There is even a
> scientific paper (I've only seen a printed version not online yet) who
> compares ways to package biology software. We are way better than other
> distributions - but we are lagging begind BioConda a lot. We have some
> upstreams who are doing Debian packaging by the help of the Debian Med
> team but that's just a minor fraction. Lots of BioConda packages are
> maintained by Upstream since they consider it easy.
>
> In short: Our "reputation" is scaring people away to favour other
> techniques.
>
> Kind regards
>
> Andreas.
>
> [1] https://bioconda.github.io/
>
Debian packaging is also pretty easy if one doesn't care about FHS,
Mutli-Arch, licensing, reproducibility, autopkgtests, hardening and so
on. I believe the list is quite long.
One of the killer features of conda is that conda software can be
managed without root. In some cases it is very important. And of course
that conda is available on osx and windows.
Best,
Alex
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