Hi Max, I think you misunderstood some of what I was saying. I've added comments inline below. -Mark
Max Horn wrote: > I understand your > disappointment with the problems in the evolution package, [...] > I know that it has flaws, but it definitly is useable. Evolution is *not* usable now because it's not buildable. It depends on ftp://ftp.ximian.com/pub/source/evolution/evolution-1.0.3.tar.gz which doesn't exist anymore. The current version is 1.0.5. This is an example of the Fink-external *source* dependencies I was talking about. I'll let you know how evolution is after I can build it. ;-) > Many people have asked why we can't just take the .deb other people > build and use that for unstable. We could do that, yeah, but it would > require various things: > > 1) Asking SF for permission to host 4-6 GB instead of the 2 GB they > already endure. Many people ask because it's such a good idea. Disk space isn't an issue, but bandwidth might be after the world began downloading all of Fink's cool software. > 2) The tool chain for maintaining a bindist must be updated to > support bindist. It must be improved to allow easy use, and be made > "fool proof" (because everybody, that includes me, makes mistakes and > it's not so nice if that means messing up the bindist) You have a substantial binary distribution under stable today. I assumed that it could be supported with the same tool set. Perhaps I'm wrong. > 3) The people that are doing this must be trustworthy. That means, I > must trust them to be careful (not messing up things in the bindist), > security aware (they might not put trojans in their .debs, but how do > I know there machines are not wide open to attacks because they > enable root and telnet and their password is "foobar" ?). Not necessarily. I'd prefer the "people" doing this to be automated. The binary distribution should be automatically derived from the source distribution. Today (if I'm not mistaken) Fink builds require interactive answers to questions to select among alternatives. One up-front interactive program to manage all of the alternatives (if one doesn't exist already - please tell me if it does) would allow the builds to be batchable. Depending upon the number of alternatives associated with a given package, there might be 2, 4, or 8 binary packages for each source package. But these are automated builds, so the computer can handle it. Automated builds make a lot of sense, but where? On which machines? Apple, are you listening? This would be a fine opportunity for someone with a few spare Macs to make a huge difference! > 4) We need a QA team that checks if this unstable bindist is actually > usable, by trying to apt-get all the packages regulary, in various > combinations (ideally, a dedicated machine with a test app that > automates this). Otherwise we will just get as many complaints Yes, that QA team would be most of your users. Folks like me. There's no getting around the fact that more users will find and report more flaws more quickly. That's a good thing. Really! Some of these users won't be polite, but it's easy to learn to ignore rude folks who don't know what unstable means. The important result will be that more packages will become stable sooner. There are second order effects as well. More users will lead to more interest which will lead to more developers. > 5) more things I don't think of now. There's no time limit. :-) In all seriousness, I know it would take work and I'm not offering to do it. It's not my decision to make. > > You appear to be heading in that direction but with relatively > >minor changes, you could be headed there faster. > > So please clearly name those "relatively minor changes" ! What you > said so far was rather vague in terms of concrete suggestions, I > think. I made or strongly implied 3 specific changes: o Include unstable packages in the Fink binary distribution. o Make Fink-local copies of all source packages that Fink requires. o Fix the dependency problem in the evolution package. And I made a few more in this message: o The binary distribution should be automatically created from the source distribution. o Ask Apple to help out with build resources. At very little expense to them, it would be a huge marketing win. o If there isn't a program that allows up front management of alternatives so that builds may be non-interactive, it would be a good project for a dedicated programmer with time on their hands. > > Cheers, > > Max > -- > ----------------------------------------------- > Max Horn > Software Developer > Cheers. Thanks again. -Mark _______________________________________________________________ Hundreds of nodes, one monster rendering program. Now that's a super model! Visit http://clustering.foundries.sf.net/ _______________________________________________ Fink-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fink-devel
