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Re: Consensus Call: Do We Want to Require or Recommend DH; comments by 2019-06-16



Quoting Andreas Tille (2019-05-27 06:29:05)
> 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.

We agree that some get scared away from Debian.  Question is why.

Like rpm, Debian arguably has a single unified _core_ structure: 
debian/rules must be a make file.  hat Sam, me, and Vincent disagree on 
in this subthread is is lack of a unified _framework_ like short-form dh 
sequencer being mandatory is what scares people off.

Does that paper you talk about point to _causes_ Debian packaging being 
more scary? Is it a) complexities related to hardening, cross-building, 
bootstrapping etc. or b) lack of a single¹ unified build framework, or 
c) that Debian is "different" in package naming and code availability 
than other system package managers or or misc. language-specific package 
managers, or d) something else than what you snipped from the beginning 
of this subthread?


 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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