Re: Piwigo, Owncloud, ...: doing it not right?
Hi
On 27.06.2017 06:40, Paul Wise wrote:
Personally, it seems like a weird idea to me. What would be the
advantage of messy Debian packages over whatever system upstream has
in place for installation and upgrades?
I'm packaging a few packages for internal use at our institute, some of
them web apps, recently eg. opennetadmin
<https://github.com/chuhn/ona/tree/debian>
In any case, I think the general movement upstream is away from distro
packaging and towards more-standardised upstream-provided "apps" in
various forms (Docker/Flatpak/snappy/etc). If you want messy, I think
using the existing messes is better than spending effort on creating
messy Debian packages.
From my point of view there are several levels of messiness (from `curl
… | sudo bash` to a fully compliant Debian package):
* Upstream web app installers are often interactive-only.
* These installers almost never keep track of installed files and
modifications.
* There's seldom an uninstall procedure etc.
You get all of this more or less automatically by turning the stuff into
a Debian package.
Additionally you get access to decent tools like dh, dbconfig-common,
Apache-integration, dependency management, log rotation aso.
Then you can iteratively make the package more Debian compliant (esp.
FHS conforming file system layout). This will help co-workers to figure
out what is where more easily.
In terms of work vs. utility from my perspective this adolescent
packaging state is sort of a sweet spot.
Getting from here to a 'proper' (first of all lintian-clean) Debian
package is normally a lot of detective work: Understand several build
systems, investigate where code and embedded stuff comes from,
acknowledge the right copyrights, fix compatibility issues when
replacing embedded libs with their Debian-provided counterparts (where
either one may be outdated …)
This would also be the point to file an ITP bug - which I personally
hesitated to do during my 15 years with Debian (shame on me).
I think a repo for immature packages might be a good thing. It could
also attract upstreams that are interested at providing Debian packages
but don't have the proper understanding of the principles behind the
Debian distro.
But this repo should be more like an incubator:
* Starting with first-shot messy packages
* Attract experienced packagers and interested users
* Add feedback from automated packaging checkers and qa tools
* Finally: Make package fit for Debian main
Does that make sense to you?
Once upon a time, unstable was a place for such activities. But AFAICT
maturity constraints for packages to enter unstable have indeed become
more and more strict (or strictly applied).
Kind regards
Christopher
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