At 06:03 PM 11/24/2005 +0100, Josselin Mouette wrote:
Le jeudi 24 novembre 2005 à 11:46 -0500, Phillip J. Eby a écrit : > And finally, and most importantly, you're ignoring the fact that this > discussion began because a Debian developer wanted to package a successful> egg-using project and its dependencies. Nobody came to you asking for your> blessing to package eggs or your approval of how useful eggs are; somebody> came and asked me for help in getting this to work with Debian. Help which> I've been giving. > For some reason, however, you seem to think that you are actually in a > position to pass judgment on the usefulness of eggs. If their usefulness> were in any meaningful question, we wouldn't be having this conversation in> the first place! You have to bear with it. In the open source world, anyone can come and discuss the usefulness of your project. This won't happen if your project isn't causing trouble to other projects, but when you're talking about breaking the python packaging practises in Debian, I think any Debian developer has the moral right to discuss your suggestions.
My point is that I am not the one who just dropped by and asked somebody to change their practices. I was off doing other things and was pulled into this discussion by someone asking for assistance. Every proposal I've made in this thread has been directed at providing that assistance. Your dislike of or disagreement with any particular proposal doesn't excuse your attitude.
I don't really care if you accept the proposals or not; you guys need to do whatever you think is best for Debian. I've only tried to educate you about your options regarding eggs, framed within the assumption that you *want* to distribute egg-based projects. The question of eggs' goodness or lack thereof is entirely irrelevant within that frame. Either you want to distribute those projects or you don't. If you don't, then this discussion is pointless. If you do, then arguing that people shouldn't use eggs is equally pointless. The only discussion that has any point is *how* we can get the needs of both Debian and the project developers met.
Why the hell would a package having nothing to do with yours would have to add a file - especially an empty file - to cope with it?
Geez, you make this sound like I just wandered in off the street and started telling people to redesign their packaging system. Somebody asked for help in Debianizing TurboGears. If you want to Debianize TurboGears, you'll have to add such a file to at least ElementTree's Debian package. The proposal I made is my attempt at offering a solution that doesn't require you to completely repackage ElementTree, while still allowing it to be used by TurboGears.
Bluntly put, it's Debian that's asking me to change my practices (and those of egg-based project authors) to suit their needs, not the other way around. You seem to be under some delusion that we need you or want you to support those projects, when it's actually the existence of eggs that allows us to not care whether *you* exist. We wouldn't be having this discussion if somebody from your group hadn't asked for *our* help, so that Debian can play in *our* sandbox. All this discussion about the relative elegance of different packaging mechanisms is irrelevant.