Hi all,
2017-06-27 0:45 GMT-05:00 Nicolas <
nikrou77@gmail.com>:
> I was maintainer for piwigo package for many years. It helps a lot as I was
> also a core member team.
> I cannot precisely why I stopped manage that package but I can remember
> acceptance rules are more and more constrainant. I think about minified
> stuff (_javascript_, stylesheets) that need to be unminified in debian.
> Upstream not always understand problem. And it gives maintainers more work
> to minified them afterwards to have a good visitors experience. Flash is
> another big problem. I didn't find a solution even if flash's end of life is
> more and more real !
>
> I don't think using a messy server is a good idea. Working on active project
> and follow upstream release is not so difficult. The first release is a bit
> difficult but afterwards it can be done easily.
I feel compelled to add my two cents here. I joined this mailing list probably about 10 years ago. Back then, I wanted to promote a set of packaging helpers to help simlink back and forth the different pieces of a webapps depending on where they'd ought to be, /usr/share, /var/lib etc.. And, yeah, it was still a mess.
I've become convinced that the current constrains for splitting files is a case of the cathedral syndrome: some skilled people build a beautiful cathedral but then we loose the knowledge about the whys and hows and just keep doing the same without understanding why.
Some of the constrains about the file system are outdated. Splitting files in /usr/share because, in the old days, mainframe servers would share these accros stations with different architectures? That sounds like a 12th century cathedral now. Android file system has been completely overhauled and, with docker containers, for instance, this is only going to go more into that direction.
More generally, even though I understand the idea of wanting to maintain a sane, clean and secured state for the global system, when the packaging system gets too much in the way of the user, then you have a fundamental conflict as to which is helping which. That goes for the minifed files that have to be un-minified and etc.
Some major languages are already progressively phasing out of the main packaging framework, ruby with the gems, Python with pip, OCaml with opam and etc. It's unfortunate but perhaps this is the next century's way of building cathedrals?
Romain