Taher Shihadeh dijo [Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 07:38:17PM +0200]: > > Why can this not be made part of the installation process ? > > I mean if Cherokee fails to run unless the required changes are made > > then why not simply make this automatic ?!? > > > > Or what am I missing here ? > > If the config is changed automatically, the server might work, but > probably not as you would think. > Silently failing is much worse than ringing all the bells and whistles, > in my opinion. At least this way you can debug from the beginning.
Still, we have had several configuration file upgrades taking place behind the scenes (look at contrib/0*to0*.py), and they rarely bring problems. If they fail to upgrade a specific configuration for a specific corner case, all is fine (as the disruption will hopefully be minor and easier to fix). Not providing a way for a working service to keep working after a minor update, and even not mentioning the need to do this update (with full, precise instructions) in the release announcement¹, speaks bad about the project's stability and fitness for use in production servers. Given that the uptake of Cherokee installed among Debian users seems to be quite low², specially compared with similarly oriented packages (small, efficient webservers, such as nginx³, lighttpd⁴, boa⁵, thttpd⁶ — There are more, yes, but they mostly seem like an excercise on programming rather than attempts at a full-blown webserver), I think the following question should be raised: Does Cherokee, in its current form, benefit in any way of being packaged for Debian? Given Debian's long stabilization cycles, we are currently shipping 0.7.2-4 in our stable release, and are still committed to supporting 0.5.5 for the previous release at least until February. It is no secret I am just unable to provide much support in case it is needed for Cherokee proper (I can try to fix packaging issues and patch minor, well-detected situations, but would not attempt to backport a fix to a two year old release). And that situation will probably hold for the future — Users are always advised to update to the newest versions when they request any kind of help; there have been several regressions in the last couple of months, and I'd really prefer sticking to 0.99.20 as it seems to me to be way more solid than newer versions. So, to make it short: Should I continue to package Cherokee? Or would you consider better for Cherokee's current development stage to be available straight from you? Of course, you are free to use my packaging (and I'll continue trying to find some free time to upgrade to the newest recommended practice), but I think the best solution right now will be to drop Cherokee from Debian, and from all other distributions with a long release (and maintenance) cycle, and focus on up-to-date packaging provided straight from you. ¹ http://lists.octality.com/pipermail/cherokee/2009-August/011036.html ² http://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=cherokee ³ http://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=nginx ⁴ http://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=lighttpd ⁵ http://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=boa ⁶ http://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=thttpd -- Gunnar Wolf • [email protected] • (+52-55)5623-0154 / 1451-2244
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