[packaging] Meeting next week to discuss trusted third-party repositories

Thomas Leonard talex5 at gmail.com
Thu Dec 18 16:36:47 PST 2008


2008/12/18 R P Herrold <herrold at owlriver.com>:
[...]
> I stated the use case as a target:  the LSB code, for self-hosting and best
> practices (non-root) building within the proposed replacement packaging tool
> you chanmpion -- if the LSB tests for distributions and application testing
> were supported and documented

Ah, sorry. I misunderstood. You want a system that can install the
software here:

  http://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/Downloads

I though you wanted a system that could install all the software
mandated by the LSB (i.e. an entire Linux distribution).

> Your emails seemingly assert all issues are covered; many 'on-lookers' seem
> willing to talk endlessly.  Show us the source archive and documentation one
> may follow to emit binaries that meet present functionality. Running code
> speaks volumes, but talk-talk and opinions are cheap and valueless without
> works

Well, I already publish my desktop environment, ROX:

  http://roscidus.com/desktop/

my set of software packaging and distribution tools, including a
peer-to-peer file server:

  http://0install.net/

and my programming language (a gcc front-end):

  http://delight.sourceforge.net/

through Zero Install, so I don't expect any particular problems with
the LSB tools unless there's something seriously odd about them.

But as I say, I'm trying to collect requirements from people who have
had actual problems. For example, Zero Install gained better
multi-arch support a few months ago after YoFrankie started using it,
because they wanted to distribute 32-bit x86 binaries to x86_64 users,
and Zero Install 0.34 didn't support that well (0.35 and later do).

> I guess the answer to my question is -- no, nothing to see here.
>
> This thread about a tool that does nothing so far as I can see, is
> irrelevant as all talk and no meat.  How about coming back with a URL when
> the use case is supported?

Last time we had this discussion on this list it was claimed that
no-one could reasonably package up svn 1.4 for the then Debian stable
because it was too hard and had too many dependencies (which is why
Debian wouldn't do it). IIRC, it took somewhat less than an hour with
Zero Install (and would take a few minutes now, using the deb0zero
tool). But I'm afraid I don't have time to package other people's
programs endlessly (this is purely a hobby for me, and there aren't
enough hours in the day to monitor 3rd-party projects for new
releases). Perhaps I'll find time over Christmas. Do you have any
reason to think the LSB tools wouldn't be easy to support?


-- 
Dr Thomas Leonard		ROX desktop / Zero Install
GPG: 9242 9807 C985 3C07 44A6  8B9A AE07 8280 59A5 3CC1


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