Re: Q to all candidates: should we have more ports?
* Wouter Verhelst <wouter@debian.org> [2019-04-01 13:55]:
> One thing that Debian has historically been good at, is to produce ports
> for various architectures. However, we're not the most widely ported;
...
> macOS, HPUX, IRIX, AIX, QNX, and Solaris[2].
>
> Should we try to catch up with these other systems in terms of ports?
> Specifically today, should we try to make Debian usable on any of the
> operating system kernels that I quoted above?
No. Debian doesn't have to be "the most X" in every area. While
it's true that Debian has historically played an important role with
ports, I don't see how combining Debian with a proprietary kernel
helps advance our mission to produce a free OS. (Maybe I misunderstood
what you're proposing.)
Of course, if someone wants to do the work we shouldn't stand in the
way unless it puts too many costs on others. But is this an effort
the DPL to rally around and encourage? Based on your email, I don't
see why (but again, maybe I don't see the full proposition).
We have to acknowledge that our resources are limited and use them
where they have the biggest impact.
I'd rather see more efforts spent on figuring out how Debian could be
useful in a mobile environment.
> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentoo/Alt#Gentoo_Prefix
I should add one caveat to what I wrote about: if for example we
improve APT/dpkg/whatever to come up with some improved solution for
today's packaging systems, I could see an argument to be made to port
this to Windows and macOS to get developer adoption and make it easier
to switch to Debian proper (similar to how GCC used to be used on
proprietary Unixes before GNU/Linux was usable).
--
Martin Michlmayr
https://www.cyrius.com/
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