Re: Wine

[Joe Hart <j.hart@orange.nl>]

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Roberto C. Sanchez wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 15, 2007 at 10:58:10PM +0100, Joe Hart wrote:
>> According to Wine HQ, there are no packages for Debian, only Ubuntu
>> because the maintainer only runs Ubuntu.  The packages are not
>> compatible with Debian because "Debian changed the package format",
>> which means you either need to compile the source or use the package on
>> one of the Debian mirrors, which is usually a bit behind the packages on
>> Wine HQ.
>>
> That is just plain ignorance on the part of the person who made that
> statement.  The package format has not changed.  It would be stupid for
> Ubuntu to do something like that, since all package management tools
> (apt, dpkg, etc) would need updating to deal with a new format.
> 

To quote http://www.winehq.org/site/download-deb

Packages here are designed to function on Ubuntu Edgy (6.10) and Dapper
(6.06). Packages here used to also work for Debian unstable, however due
to changes in Debian this no longer works and our Ubuntu maintainer is
unable to support them. If you can help provide up-to-date Debian
packages, please contact Scott Ritchie.

> The problem is more with dependencies than with anything else.  As I
> said, the format is the same.  Complaining that an Ubuntu .deb package
> doesn't work on Debian is like complaining that an Etch .deb doesn't
> work on Sarge.  Over time, as things diverge, it is more likely that
> packages won't fit across branches.  The same is true with Debian and
> Ubuntu.
> 
> Now, it is really not hard to build package for both Ubuntu and Debian.
> In fact, it is no harder than building packages for Sid and Sarge.
> Tools like sbuild, pbuilder and chroot can be used to great advantage
> here.  I hear that there are some Debian developers whose primary/only
> real platform is Ubuntu and that they package using pbuilder chroots.
> Generally, this is considered bad practice for a Debian developer since
> that means that the package received no testing on Debian, but it can be
> done.

> So, to sum it up, the reason that some upstream developers provide
> Ubuntu but not Debian packages is because they either don't know about
> tools like pbuilder or are just lazy.

I fully agree.  Now we just need to convince Mr. Richie of that.  His
e-mail address is:  mailto:scott@open-vote.org

I don't think we'll get very far, and I am not the one to do it, since I
am not experienced enough with properly building Debian packages that I
can engage in a technical discussion about it.

I misquoted the first time, it doesn't say the package has changed, it
said Debian changed.

Registerd Linux user #443289 at http://counter.li.org/
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