Re: Apt repository interoperability, again
On Sun, 20 Apr 2008, Herman Robak wrote:
1 a) There are MANY Debian derivatives. Not all of them are binary
incompatible with Debian proper. Cherrypicking packages from them
could be a killer feature if common sense (check your own distro
first! Check compability!) was enforced.
Common sense is nothing you can enforce and especially there is no
technical means to do so. So I would be very reluctant about this
approach. The "Common sense" approach has the critical drawback that
anybody tends to regard his own sense as common which is wrong in
to many cases. I do not really want to be responsible to support
people who broke their system by means I can not reproduce. So in
short: Every user is free to Cherrypick whereever he wants, but
my support is restricted to things inside Debian because I'm technical
unable to help out. If anybody else in the crew is able to do
so and volunteers to support "cherypickers" I'd be happy about that.
1 b) No matter how much you yell NOOOOO!!! to the above, users are
inclined to think it's a great idea and do it anyway. I think it
is prudent to continue leading them when they go down that path
instead of saying that all bets are off.
Well, it is sometimes called ignorance or unfriendliness if
DDs issue statements like I did above. I'd call it liability.
I don't take over a job I'm not trained for. I don't drive a car
without drivers license - and I'm also not trained to wild guess
what a user did on his system.
BTW, this is my official statement. If a user asks kindly about
a certain problem I do at least try to give him a hint. But there
is a difference between politeness and doing a job (whether it
is a volunteer job or not).
Kind regards
Andreas.
--
http://fam-tille.de
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