Re: [DEBIAN] Standardization?
> I just has a discussion on a mailing list for another distribution and a
> point was raised that I think deserves some discussion here. The main
> focus was on linux applications and difficulties in supporting the
> different distributions and versions as linux is such a quickly moving
> target.
>
> One of the points raised was that even though there is a filesystem
> standard, there is still too much leeway in that some things like system
> initialization files and how they are arrainged can differ widely from one
> distribution to the next. It was noted that debian does its /etc/rc.*
> completely different than RedHat does as an example.
>
> Is there any REALLY GOOD reason for stuff like this? I know that the next
> distribution is likely to cause a lot of turmoil with the libc6 thing and
> a lot of work needs to go into recompliling the world but how about if we
> have a look at this in some future release.
Generally, Debian approach is technically cleaner in many such cases.
>
> Maybe we should sit down, take a hard look at some of the other popular
> distributions (Slackware, RedHat, Caldera), look at how they have some
> common things set up and see if some proposals can be created to take the
> best concepts from the distributions and try to come up with a more
> unified approach to basic system layout issues.
I think it was already done. What is needed is that not only Debian
took a hard look, but other distributions also, which is quite
improbable.
> I use the rc.* stuff as a basic example because if an application needs to
> update an init script or create one, you basicly need completely different
> code for each installation script.
>
> Linux International should probably be in on this as well. Unless there
> is some compelling technical reason to do something a particular way
> (other than that was simply how the distribution evolved and changing it
> will break all the contrib packages) then a standard method should be
> adopted. I am not talking about a merger in packaging formats (though
> that WOULD be nice) but a look at how the different distributions vary in
> their construction, figure out if there is any good REASON for it, and
> decide on a standard.
>
> Until the different distributions come closer together in this regard, I
> fear that you will see commercial applications coming only for commercial
> distributions that can pay developers to create the stuff based on their
> format. This may cause other distributions with wither on the vine over
> time as good applications became easy to find for the other distributions.
Sure, this is very important point. But... filesystem standard is good
enough to insure compatibility of _applications_ in most cases (if not
all of them). The "Debian and commercial software" problem lies in a
completely different place...
>
> Chances of getting the source for a commercial app and being able to
> custom build it for another distribution would be pretty slim.
>
>
> George Bonser
>
> Segmentation Fault just kidding :)
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| _ 7 | Alexander Yukhimets |
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