Re: Debian as a social group and how to develop it better
On Mon, 2 Dec 2002, Xavian-Anderson Macpherson wrote:
> On Monday 2002 December 02 11:11, Peter Palfrader wrote:
> > Also be aware that one cannot build _the_ binary image which works in
> > all possible scenarios. There are reasons to build things differently.
>
> Is this only due to architectures? I am primarily concerned about
> changes made to software running on the same architectural-platform. I
> realize that there is and must be a tree which conforms to these
> differences. But I just want to know how much duplication can be
> avoided on every branch of the tree? How much is necessity, and how
> much is 'different for the sake of being different'?
"different for the sake of being different" is called a fork.
Our job as package maintainers are to maintain the *packaging* of
software, not to make it stand out from the packaging done by other
distributions.
Debian packages tend to be more true to the original source than those of
other large distributions. In the past there has been problems with Redhat
releasing a version of glibc that was not authorised by the upstream
developers of the library, and caused lots of trouble because software
built against the Redhat glibc was binary incompatible with official
releases - both older and newer - of glibc. This includes closed-source
applications like Netscape Communocator, Adobe Acrobat and RealPlayer that
cannot be recompiled against a proper glibc.
- Jonas
--
Jonas Smedegaard (+45 40843136) http://dr.jones.dk/~jonas/
Spiff ApS (= IT-guide dr. Jones ApS) http://dr.jones.dk/
Debian GNU/Linux developer http://people.debian.org/~js/
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