Re: how many users is enough? (was Re: Debian Installer 7.0 Beta4 release)
> That's an even more flawed argument. We're talking about packaging, not
> development.
Packaging will differ if the maintainer thinks that an optional dep is
better than another, or the option is useless etc...
So, I think packagers must have some knowledge about the software they
maintain.
But I might be wrong.
> (Personally, I'm suspicious of software and changes that are
> distribution-specific.)
Are you suspicious about the Debian Linux kernel? It have distro specific
patches. (But I think and hope that they are reported upstream. Did not
checked.)
> (haven't tried this, though).
I think you should.
The only time I tried, it was for a package maintained by their developers
named openmw. Trying installing it was not possible because of a version
difference o libc6 IIRC.
I tried to "force" the installation, to do it by hand, and the software
just crashed.
My opinion about that is that distros integrate patches on their
softwares, for some things, and those patches makes things not working
from a distro to another, even it the other is the ancestor.
But I only tried with one package, so maybe other works nicely.
I really think that the packaging is not so easy as it sounds. If it was,
all developers would provide packages automagically generated for all
distros, and this would not require maintainers.
But strangely, that's not so common. Maybe because it's not that simple...
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