Follow-on question at the bottom....
On 12/31/15 3:10 PM, Steve Litt wrote:
I guess I'm an "upstream", being the originator of the VimOutliner
project (probably a few thousand users), the UMENU project (probably
about 10 users), the Amounter project (2 confirmed users), and several
less-used pieces of software.
As a Developer, I'm not a fan of packaging, because from the very
outset I try very hard to make my software have minimal dependencies,
I try to make its dependencies universally available, and if it's C I
make it cc -Wall myprogram with no errors or warnings. Except for the
notoriously undeployable UMENU, my stuff goes on with a few copy
commands and maybe a compile. No need to obfuscate it with a package.
<snip>
As a user, of course I'm not going to hand compile LibreOffice, Sigil
or Firefox (Iceweasel). My mama didn't raise no fool.
But when it comes to all of djb's stuff, alternate init systems,
project supervision software, or newer than newest versions of LyX,
I ./configure;make;make test;make install. Again, my mama didn't raise
no fool.
<snip>
Packages and package managers are a great thing. I'd never want to
forego a good package manager. You'll never catch me hand-compiling
Firefox. But in my opinion, sometimes you're much better off kissing the
package manager goodbye for a specific app, and
using ./configure;make;make test;make install, or whatever else the
README or INSTALL file tells you to do.
AND...
On 12/31/15 2:14 PM, Nate Bargmann wrote:
Hi Miles, et. al.
As an upstream developer/maintainer and downstream user of packages both
locally built and packaged, I've come to the conclusion that, at least
<snip>
At least due to the FHS Debian has never taken steps to violate the idea
that /usr/local is reserved for the local administrator. As a user of
GNU Autotools in the projects I am involved in this is a good thing as
this is the Autotools default destination directory.
<snip>
In short, as an upstream it's my job to make sure that 'configure; make;
make install' "just work" and is documented and it's the distribution's
job to make sure its packaging system is documented. Did I explain it
well enough to see where the line of responsibility between upstream and
distribution lies and their responsibility to the user?
YUP - made it very clear, and I basically agree with delineation. I
tend to agree with Steve re. when to use, and not use, package
management (and with Joel's comment re. "checkinstall" making it easier
to remove things later.
A follow-up question: What, if anything, do you guys include in the way
of init scripts?
[My current observation is that systemd's biggest impact on my operation
is that it kind of breaks some sysvinit scripts, and not a lot of people
include systemd configs. Hence, my aversion to updating my current
Debian installation, and why I'm looking at Devuan and a few other
options for my next, and overdue, major update to our production servers.]
Miles
--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra
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