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Re: Apology to the authors of helper packages



Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@datasync.com> writes:

> 	I should apologize to the people who write helper scripts for
>  my outburst; I regretted it as soon as I had sent it.

  Christoph Lameter <clameter@miriam.fuller.edu> writes:
  > Maybe we should also try to have developers who are up to date on the
  > tools and who use modern software.

This was an attack.  Perhaps you overreaccted a bit, but it wasn't a
reasonable statement.  Of course, I don't know the history of previous
conversations.

> I have the deepest respect towards the authors, who are trying to do
> a very hard job.

I still think that we need something more like the automake mechanism,
that makes a package self-contained and capable of regenerating itself
fairly exactly (minus minor changes in all the other tools on the
system).

I also think that someone writing a packaging tool should go out of
their way to make sure that their tool conforms with policy, even to
the point of intentionally rejecting their own biases, and only
allowing themselves to make fundamental changes after thorough debate.
If many people are using the tool, then pandering to your own biases
has an undue influence on the distribution.  In other words, the
author of a tool like this should practice substantial restraint.

I'm no expert on debmake, but I certainly at least like debhelper's
approach better.  Is there any way using debmake for a developer
that's trying to debug some package to download the source and
trivially turn off stripping in the resulting binary package?  I only
mention this because I was helping someone track down a bug in a
package recently and I came across this.

> 	I should keep a closer rein on my temper. I still do not use
>  helper packages for, yes, I do not trust the scripts (no
>  offence). This is a calculated, personal decision, not because I am a
>  minimalist resisting change, for reasons I should not have cited.

But I don't think it's unreasonable, as long as you're not an ass
about it, to let other maintainers (new and old) know *why* you're
uncomfortable.  It wasn't until a debate (ages ago) that came up over
this issue, that made it clear to me that I didn't want to use these
tools.
 
-- 
Rob Browning <rlb@cs.utexas.edu>
PGP fingerprint = E8 0E 0D 04 F5 21 A0 94  53 2B 97 F5 D6 4E 39 30


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