Re: Bug#129699: ITP: race -- A 3D arcade overhead car game.
On Fri, Jan 18, 2002 at 03:42:20PM +0100, Tille, Andreas wrote:
> > So we should be encouraging upstream to do something like this. If upstream
> > decides to make such an option the default, great. If they don't, then
> > Debian Jr. may provide an alternate version that makes it the default and
> > conflicts with the non-junior version. Older users who wish to use the
> Two versions would be hard to maintain.
Not really. And it builds on existing infrastructure. It is not
uncommon to have multiple binaries when there are conflicting
features in each.
> My idea would be
>
> /etc/groups:
>
> children:x:<GID>:child1,child2,child3
> ....
>
> /etc/junior/xpenguin.conf
>
> <Option> <Group allowed to have this option>
>
> This requires some work on the source code but would not bloat our archive
> with two versions of the same thing.
Ugh. I think you'll find it's more work than simply providing a multi
binary package. I favour simpler solutions that work well in other
environments (think non-Debian). I'd rather improve the child-friendliness
of free software in general than devise complicated Debian-specific
solutions.
As for the bloat, you may have a point there. We should consider
toggling defaults in the child's environment, or in a personal
rc file then. That would be lightweight, and tailorable per child.
Thus, along with our requests upstream "please make this configurable
via a command line switch, preferably with the objectionable feature
turned off by default" we should ask "and could you also please make
it configurable via a conf file or environment variable". In fact,
perhaps this latter approach is even more important than the command-
line switch. The conf file approach is particularly appealing because
the "strict" approach can be implemented with read-only immutable
conf files (although a clever child might find that there is a
--conf-file option they can exploit to get around this ... but it
is arguable that by the time they reach the sophistication to do
that, the "inappropriate" feature is no longer a big issue).
We'll have to carefully think this one over before we go making
an unofficial policy and recommendations to upstream, as some solutions
are clearly superior to others. Whatever we decide on should be fairly
trivial to implement in most cases, and should not be Debian-specific.
Ben
--
nSLUG http://www.nslug.ns.ca synrg@sanctuary.nslug.ns.ca
Debian http://www.debian.org synrg@debian.org
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