Hi, On Fri, Dec 20, 2019 at 08:16:21PM +0100, lisa.carranquerios@free.fr wrote: > Would you now more about this inheritance of "deity" name ? Nobody of the original team (and a few more in between) is around here to answer that in full detail, but what can be deducted from mailinglist posts is that the project to write a package manager to improve/replace upon dpkg was first nicknamed "deity" and got eventually a mailinglist to coordinate work. The name was eventually changed based on many and long discussions, the final push being [0] confirming the hunt for a new name which ended in the announcement of a new name (and release) of the first version of APT (which was one of the many suggestions given in this thread). The already established resources of the project (which was roughly a year old by then already) kept the nickname. While other things perished over time (like switching between multiple version control systems, the plans for a GUI which apt is just a console demo for, replacing dpkg, …) the mailing list remained and so the name stuck. By now some (in particular me) like to play with the words: Like being a follower of supercow, praying to deity@ to be saved from dependency hell or that as a perk for maintaining apt you will get many mails¹ starting with "Dear deity". [0] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/1998/02/msg01562.html ¹ sadly, it tends to be spam. Debian fun fact: There are other projects using old names for resources. Salsa admins are e.g. hanging out in #alioth, the name of salsas predecessor. Or release teams britney performing testing transitions. Old habits die hard. > Furthermore, is this mailing list used to post questions about package > management or is it more on the dedicated channel ? In general, yes. There are specific mailinglists for specific tools e.g. dpkg or aptitude, but one of the benefits of being called "deity@" instead of e.g. "debian-apt@" is that we can act as a sort of catch-all for everything related to package management which isn't entirely related to one specific package manager (and most of them are apt-based anyhow). It doesn't matter that much though as they are all low-traffic lists, unlike e.g. debian-devel@ which tends to see more mails per day than we here per month, so getting it right on the first try and keeping it focused (whatever that means for d-d@) is far more important there than it is here. Another option is as Julian already mentioned our #debian-apt IRC channel where questions can probably be answered faster than on a mailing list. In either case, reply times in this time of year are likely to be abyssal (at least in my case), so I will wish happy festive days and new year to whom it applies & best regards David Kalnischkies
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