Re: [Soc-coordination] GSOC idea for next year: undusting some packages
On Wed, Oct 01, 2008 at 07:10:49AM +0200, Christian Perrier <bubulle@debian.org> was heard to say:
> ===============================================================
> Maintaining our key packages
>
> Has anyone noticed how loosely APT is maintained since about...several years?
>
> Michael Vogt is currently the person doing uploads and work but, being
> committed to other things (IIRC in Ubuntu...or in real life), he
> certainly can't devote enough time for this.
>
> Otavio Salvador helped from time to time, either merging patches or
> doing some uploads.
>
> Daniel Burrows contributed in some bugs, as he's obviously directly
> interested in APT, being the maintainer of aptitude.
I don't know if GSoC would help, but I agree with what Christian said.
The state of apt right now is a scandal. This is a core part of the
package management system for our project as well as several commercial
distributions, and yet it's been neglected on and off ever since I
started working with it nine years ago. Sometimes someone picks it up
for a while and fixes a few of the problems, but it's been a long time
since it had a really active primary maintainer. (I hope no-one is
offended if I say that: Michael and Otavio have been doing fine
work [0], but mostly acting as caretakers, not project leaders. I
think they would agree with me.)
There isn't anyone right now who has enough time to stay on top of
the project even to the extent that I do on aptitude (for instance, I
can't because aptitude takes all my free time). The codebase is quite
crufty and a pain to work on, and there are serious design issues that
lead to bugs which users bump into on a regular basis. No-one has the
time or confidence to do the redesign and cleanup work that is necessary
for the long-term health of the project. We also have people off
writing wrapper libraries for apt because the API is a pain to use and
doesn't use modern C++. It seems to me that it would be better for us
to improve the API instead, but we don't have time to do anything but
fix the worst bugs as they come up.
I'm not sure exactly why this is so. I tend to think that it's a
combination of people not being very interested in package management
(because it's not something that directly solves problems for them, but
more of an obstacle to getting their work done [1]), and perhaps the
fact that Debian doesn't attract people who want to write medium-large
pieces of C++ software. But more the former than the latter.
Daniel
[0] whereas I have been a total slacker ever since I was added to
the project.
[1] compare, for instance, to darcs, an obscure VCS no-one uses
written in a language no-one knows using concepts no-one can
understand, which has multiple highly active developers and a
busy mailing list. apt is just a bit larger than darcs, is
used by every user of several popular distributions (at least
Debian, Ubuntu, Xandros), and is written in a well-known systems
programming language, yet has far less energy devoted to it.
I believe that part of the reason is that VCSes let people do
work that they're interested in, whereas a package manager is
just a boring piece of infrastructure in their minds.
This is the same reason that public parks are kept clean and neat,
while bridges are ignored until they fall over and ferries are
ignored until they break down. [2] At least in my country; I make
no claims that yours is as short-sighted. ;-)
[2] I have nothing against either public parks or darcs, I just wish
we also spent some time keeping the infrastructure in shape.
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