On Fri, 2015-01-23 at 10:57 +0000, Anthony Towns wrote: > - having automated scripts pull everything from CPAN (et al), package > it as debs, and publish it That already exists IIRC but I don't know where it is. If you want to work on the more general problem here I'd suggest looking at two things related to this: GoboLinux's package manager has the concept of foreign packages and is able to deal with them quite well. I can't find a reference for this but there was a talk at the distros miniconf at LCA in Wellington. DEP-11 will eventually allow us to run commands like below, allowing us to catch up with RPM's ability to put non-RPM things in Provides. apt-get install --perl HTML::Parser apt-get install --binary man apt-get install --header zlib.h apt-get install --firmware carl9170-1 https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11 > Isn't that statement alone a pretty clear indication that Debian's not > addressing the packaging problems of today? I didn't say that we aren't packaging web stuff. That is definitely happening, countless ruby/npm/php modules have entered Debian in recent years. The thing that isn't happening is Debian-specific policy and standards for packaging web stuff. > Why is that something "the GNOME folks" are doing, but "the Debian > folks" aren't? GNOME are interested in containers since they want "apps", where applications come with the libraries they depend on, either via static binaries or bundling but Debian generally considers that a bad idea. Most of the containerisation stuff in recent years is focussed on that. > My last phone (nexus 4) lasted a bit over two years, which is longer > than my current laptop is going to last, I think, given they keycaps > are starting to fall off. My tablet gets much less use, but is about > two and a half I think. The difference is that your x86 laptop will get supported by the Linux kernel community during its lifetime but your ARM devices probably wont. > In any event, cyanogenmod already demonstrates that the free software > world can support them. The cyanogenmod model (and Replicant) for supporting devices is one fork of the Android version of the Linux kernel per device... > > It is also much more work to do things the Debian way. > In so far as that's true, it's a problem to be fixed. I'm not sure that is something that is fixable. It is simply more work to care about licenses and license compatibility, to package deps separately, to do security audits, to do QA on packages and code etc. -- bye, pabs https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise
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