Bug#950994: Discourage package in contrib to install the real program via another package manager
On Sun, Feb 09, 2020 at 11:47:18PM -0500, Olek Wojnar wrote:
> 1) Perhaps surprisingly, I agree in principle that installing from an
> external source should not be "encouraged" under normal circumstances.
>
> 2) However, this illustrates a use case that perhaps has not come up in
> the past. As I explained in one of the bug reports against my packages,
> the rationale for this was to provide a temporary alternate
> functionality for end users while upstream goes through a period of
> instability.
>
> 2a) Ideally, I would have preferred to remove the packages in
> question from Debian and have a system that would have presented users
> with options for alternate sources of that package. I may try to hack
> something together for my packages because I agree with a comment on one
> of those bugs that transitioning to an alternate package source should
> not be done without explicit user action.
>
> 2b) In a general sense though, this seems like a mechanism that may
> have value beyond these two packages. For example, would it be possible
> for maintainers to list alternate sources of a package in a new field in
> d/control? Then, if a package must be removed from Debian either
> temporarily or permanently, users could be presented with alternate
> options for that package. Or if certain users want the bleeding-edge
> version they can easily get to it instead of pestering a maintainer to
> package something that is not stable enough for Debian.
>
> 2c) The problem with saying a user could just install from
> snap/flatpak/etc is that a user may not know what other options are out
> there and may not know if they are authoritative (e.g. many but not all
> packages are created by the upstream authors). What I am proposing
> (well, more like thinking about at the moment, and looking for feedback)
> is a system to create an equivalence between the official Debian package
> and the same package in other systems. Does anyone else see value in
> such a construct?
>
> > Another package manager in subject could be snap, flatpak, pip, nix, etc.
> >
> > [1] https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cyphesis-cpp
> > https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/ember
> > [2] https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/snapd
>
> In summary, as snap/flatpak/etc increase in popularity I think it may be
> a good idea to have a formalized method for Debian package maintainers
> to designate authoritative equivalent sources for their packages, if
> they wish to do so.
May not answer you question directly.
There's something called software center. Like discover[1] for KDE plasma,
gnome-software[2] for GNOME.
Users can install either debian package, or flatpak, or snap apps.
[1] https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/plasma-discover
[2] https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gnome-software
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