On Sun, Apr 13, 2003 at 05:01:38PM +0200, Sven Luther wrote: > I have been toying with the idea of producing official debian packages > from the bi-monthly X developpment snapshots which were recently > announced. This would be my way to stop complaining, and actually do > something about the X situation in debian, so i hope it gets the > approval of everyone. *shrug*, if it's actually productive, sure. It'll only come off if you maintain it well - just building it automatically and hoping for the best *will* *not* *work*. > Now, these packages, being cvs snapshots, would not be of production > quality and would in no way replace either Branden's package or Daniel's > unofficial packages. They would help to have a new upstream release who > is nearer the quality of the debian package, and help the X strike force > to produce packages more quickly after a new X release. Well, only if they're good quality. If you're going to help the XSF, you need to track upstream by reading every line of diff, staying active on the lists and watching for new patches and reports of breakage, and getting your own hands dirty, checking that it actually works on all architectures, not just builds, and not letting things slide (e.g. updating the MANIFEST for a new file, but not the .install). It's really a full-time job, although maintaining the .99.x snapshots was easier, because I didn't have to deal with the patch hell I have now, with 4.3.0. > Now, i would love to get the opinion of both Daniel and Branden on this, > as well as the opinion of the X porters. I understand there is problems > with the fact of releasing X packages out of CVS snapshots, and that the > user will have to be told (if they read it and such) that they cannot > expect from these package the same high quality as from the official > packages. I hope this will not cause too much problems or such, and that > our users can make the difference between an normal package and a > -snapshot package. Well, you're really very much on your own. I personally won't put my name to something I'm not involved in, let alone something I don't even use, and Branden probably feels the same way. If they're good quality, then by all means, go for it. It'll help out the X team a lot. If they're not, then it's really just there for users who either have quite new video cards, or are easily distracted by shiny stuff[0]. If your package is of good enough quality, it'll get integrated in. It's really that simple. > I would also like this to be an official package, not like Daniel's > 4.3.0 package, so that it gets build on each supported arch, so that > problems and breakages can easily and quickly get folded back upstream. There are only two ways you can get it built on every supported architecture: * Upload it to Debian. * Have one machine of every architecture, or be friends with someone who does. It doesn't happen any other way, unfortunately - I'm pretty sure regular developers can't inject stuff into sbuilds. I personally spend a fair bit of time running around on IRC and in private email talking to all the porters, trying to get things built, rebuilt, patches tested, getting failure reports, et al. > So, is this a good idea, or do people here have objections to it. Well, you're welcome to create them - I'd certainly be out of line to attempt to prevent you doing so. I'd be interested to see how they progressed as it went along, patches gradually became more difficult to maintain (commenting out checksource_command is *not* the right solution), etc. The key issue here is how much work you intend to put in, as it's really not a part-time job. As I said above, if the packages rock, then that's great, and it'll help the X team out a lot. If their quality isn't so good, then it'll only hinder the X team, because it means they'll have to deal with a lot more questions from users, cut because they can't cleanly upgrade, or they don't have a working X, or whatever. Expecting the XSF to lend support is probably going a bit far - my packages aren't official XSF packages, despite the amount of work I put in (debian/patches is extensively maintained, and I do regular back-syncs with 4.2.1). The only ones that are, are Branden's, and the only time that's going to change is when someone with the skills, time, and Developership steps up to the co-maintainer plate. :) d [0]: The most-commented on feature of XFree86 4.3 is the cursor stuff. -- Daniel Stone <daniel@raging.dropbear.id.au> <dstone@kde.org> KDE: Konquering a desktop near you - http://www.kde.org
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