Re: What about a user-contrib directory?
On 17 Oct 1997, Paul Seelig wrote:
> It's IMHO a pity
> that one can't contribute without becoming an official maintainer.
Why? There's no hard test to pass or evil contracts to sign to
become an official maintainer. Why should any user want to contribute
his packages but shouldn't want to become an official mantainer?
> Above all there is no possibility to at least unofficially update
> packages for 'stable' which the official maintainers seem to have
> forgotten about (or whatever reason they may have) like it was (maybe
> still is?) way too long the case e.g. for the Debian packages of "gv"
> or "mc" to name just a few. Here would be the possibility to have at
> least an unofficial user contributed package available for download
> instead of having to accept pretty outdated versions of official
> packages which are sometimes not available even in 'unstable'.
There's always the possibility to upload an "official" non-maintainer
update, but it won't get into stable without testing, and only if
it is a serious bug or security fix. Perhaps we should relax
that last rule by saying that packages that haven't been updated for
too long (for some definition of too long), are "seriously buggy".
> I learned making my own Debian packages mainly out of the need to keep
> my 'stable' based system up to date since i'm not very content with
> the way 'stable' is kept in tune with the release frequency of the
> upstream author's versions.
What's wrong with following "unstable" if you want to be at the bleeding
edge?
> Not all users with enough skills to make their own Debian packages are
> in the position to make their work available to a larger public by
> providing FTP services like i can privately do to some limited degree
> at "ftp://ietpd1.sowi.uni-mainz.de/pub/debian/unofficial/";. All those
> talented packagers out there should be given the opportunity to make
> available unofficially what can't be provided on an official basis.
I still haven't see a reason why they can't provide their packages
officially. It's as easy as saying "I have packaged blah, and would
like to contribute that to Debian". Am I missing something?
> Therefore i propose in the established spirit of the Linux community
> to provide a section with officially unsupported user contributed
> Debian packages on the official Debian FTP sites just as Redhat does.
> I already have some packages waiting... ;-)
The main difference here is that with RH you can't put your packages
in the "main" section, just in contrib. With Debian you can, so IMHO
there's no need for a user contributed section, because the whole
thing is user-contributed. :-)
> PS: Please don't reply by e-mail and exclusively only to the list.
> I'd like to start an open discussion on this topic and don't want
> to receive any messages twice.
Oops, my english language skills are not good enough to understand that
paragraph. Perhaps it should say "Please reply by e-mail and exclusively
only to the list", without that "don't"?
--
Enrique Zanardi ezanardi@ull.es
Dpto. Fisica Fundamental y Experimental Univ. de La Laguna
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