Re: pycharm package in debian

[Ghislain Vaillant <ghisvail@gmail.com>]

Le 1 oct. 2017 09:49, "Ben Finney" <bignose@debian.org> a écrit :

Ghislain Vaillant <ghisvail@gmail.com> writes:

> Don't get me wrong, I understand the rationales from a DFSG
> perspective. I am just questioning whether users of this particular
> piece of software would particularly care.

The same could be asked of many user-facing packages in Debian. Your
question, though, makes an incorrect assumption: that “users of this
particular piece of software” is a group whose membership is unaffected
by having the package in Debian.

On the contrary. Take me as a counter-example. I am not a user of this
particular piece of software, because I have little interest in judging
for myself the hundreds of user-facing applications on my system.

If it were in Debian I can then take all the assurance that brings about
freedom and maintenance, and I may indeed consider using this particular
piece of software where otherwise I would not.

So, one important reason to package a work in Debian is to *increase*
the set of people who can easily install and use it.

All 3 means of installation (Jetbrain's app, snap and potentially apt) are one-liners for the end-user. So, ease-of-use is hardly a compelling argument.

And I don't question your initial assessment about other applications in the archive. Hence myself mentioning eclipse earlier, as a similar package which used to be actively maintained until the effort died out.

I am just wondering whether an effort to package pycharm would not reach the same outcome, assuming it passes the initial import phase. The Atom IDE for instance never did.

Ghis