On Fri, January 20, 2012, David Rawson Couzelis wrote: > Of course using a package manager is better than installing using "make > install". I think everyone agrees on that. But that doesn't mean the files > used by a package manager should be provided by the package developer. > That's what package maintainers are for.
That's not the point. If you have no relation to a foo-distro there's no need for you to support it yourself. However if you have somebody in the project who who uses that foo-distro and does packaging, then there's a real benefit for your users if they find the build scripts in the RCS code as it means that they can simply pull the code and create their own, bleeding-edge packages. In WM we have more than even one person who are familiar with Debian packaging. Kix is even an active developer on the project. I'm doing Debian builds and provide the results for download, actually the WM version I use is always a Debian package of some build from the 'next' branch. Being able to pull the code and create a package for your distro is an incredible benefit. Why remove it without any trouble? I just don't get why those files bother some people so much. > I'm unfamiliar with the process of creating a package for Debian. Is it > that much different and harder compared to Arch Linux? Doesn't Debian also > have their own repository for the package build files? (maybe kix can help > answer) If I want a mainstream package I don't need all of this. But I want the latest code. > Does any other software project provide the package build files for > different operating systems? (there aren't any that I know of) It depends. There's quite a few projects having the 'debian' folder in the source repo. I greatly appreciate this, because it simplifies building for me. > Anyway, I see no need for the Window Maker developers to try to make > packages for different operating systems. That's what GNU Autotools is for. > Just announce that the current version of Window Maker is now (0.95.1), and > all of the package maintainers will start using that. You don't get the point. If you're lucky you get a working build and install using autotools. If you're more lucky you'll be able to remove the software later (you'll have to preserve your build files for that). If through some update some of the files your self-baked software depends on have changed (new library versions etc.) you can be lucky if the program crashes immediately. All this is unnecessary if you have a build script for your distro at hand which clearly defines what the app depends on and registers every single file you've installed. You don't always have that luxury. Here we have it and some people feel offended by a few files they are not using and which cause a few more commits... Cheers, M'bert -- ----------- / http://herbert.the-little-red-haired-girl.org / ------------- =+= My family says I'm a psychopath, but the voices in my head disagree -- To unsubscribe, send mail to [email protected].
