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Untz: Results of the App Installer meeting, and some thoughts on cross-distro collaborationUntz: Results of the App Installer meeting, and some thoughts on cross-distro collaborationPosted Jan 26, 2011 3:27 UTC (Wed) by yarikoptic (subscriber, #36795)In reply to: Untz: Results of the App Installer meeting, and some thoughts on cross-distro collaboration by skvidal Parent article: Untz: Results of the App Installer meeting, and some thoughts on cross-distro collaboration
> So, what is the incentive for a distro that wants to survive and be independent to collaborate on this kind of technology?
Because there is LOTS of effort duplication going on and joining the forces would benefit all communities and companies staying behind (echoing your 'Debian/Fedora difference question'). Neither distribution is suicidal enough to artificially create "differences" just for the sake of staying "different"; but it historically happened that different approaches/instrumentations/ideologies came into existence and now split the "distributions" market and userbase.
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Untz: Results of the App Installer meeting, and some thoughts on cross-distro collaboration Posted Jan 26, 2011 3:38 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
there is work that can be re-used (figuring out what apps and library versions a particular application needs for example), and there are parts that cannot (the final packaging into .deb or .rpm)
keep in mind that there are applications that do a pretty good job of converting between .deb and .rpm today, that could be enhanced, or a new metadata format could be created that contains a superset of the data that the different package formats need (making the job of creating packages for multiple distros easier)
also, feeding patches between distros and to the upstream will also help reduce duplicated effort.
Untz: Results of the App Installer meeting, and some thoughts on cross-distro collaboration Posted Jan 26, 2011 22:07 UTC (Wed) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link] there is work that can be re-used (figuring out what apps and library versions a particular application needs for example) Most of that is done automatically today. E.g. in Fedora the packaging guidelines specify that only in rare cases the packager should give dependencies explicitly. keep in mind that there are applications that do a pretty good job of converting between .deb and .rpm today, that could be enhanced, or a new metadata format could be created that contains a superset of the data that the different package formats need (making the job of creating packages for multiple distros easier) It isn't just a "format" issue, the differences are in packaging policies (i.e., what packages are named, how much to split up packages for libraries, handling of documentation). And futhermore there are differences in configuration handling (e.g., how/if default configurations are handled, where configuration is kept, how it is handled). also, feeding patches between distros and to the upstream will also help reduce duplicated effort. That is a distribution policy issue. I believe distributions have gotten ever better at working (with) upstream, keeping local patches only where strictly necessary (or as an interim fix while upstream fixes their code). Disclaimer: I'm a Fedora user and ambassador, so the above might certainly be biased by the distribution I do know best.
Untz: Results of the App Installer meeting, and some thoughts on cross-distro collaboration Posted Jan 26, 2011 4:10 UTC (Wed) by nevyn (subscriber, #33129) [Link]
> Because there is LOTS of effort duplication going on and joining the forces would benefit all
> communities and companies staying behind
Sure, and there's lots of effort duplication between Qt+KDE and gtk+GNOME ... and with GNOME3 and Ubuntu that looks like it might split again.
As Seth said, the problem is that after the initial split and time investment it's just _really_ hard to merge back. And to create "a standard" that multiple people can implement to easily, is at least as hard as everyone just doing their own thing with very few benefits (what users will care that backend format X is shared with distro. FOO which they'll never use).
Untz: Results of the App Installer meeting, and some thoughts on cross-distro collaboration Posted Jan 26, 2011 4:29 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
I'll point out that KDE and Gnome are cooperating, that's what freedesktop.org is all about, they are working to define the underlying pieces in a way that they can both live with, even if the implementation and visible result is significantly different between the two.
Ubuntu is straying from this a bit, but unless they get buy-in from lots of application developers to write to a different, Ubuntu specific API, it won't stay separate long term (it may be that Ubuntu moves back to mechanisms that currently exist, or it may be that some of the things that Ubuntu is trying become standard and the other desktops start supporting them)
Untz: Results of the App Installer meeting, and some thoughts on cross-distro collaboration Posted Jan 26, 2011 15:46 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
freedesktop.org often looks a lot more like 'GNOME people define stuff, KDE people use it'. GNOME people get their stuff in without effort: when KDE people try, all too often there is endless argument and nothing happens.
Untz: Results of the App Installer meeting, and some thoughts on cross-distro collaboration Posted Jan 28, 2011 4:08 UTC (Fri) by markshuttle (subscriber, #22379) [Link]
Much of the Unity work in Ubuntu is based on FreeDesktop.org collaboration with, amongst others KDE, and it's Gnome which has decided to purse a different course.
The Ubuntu indicators framework, for example, was developed in Ubuntu after discussions with Gnome developers, and was also developed in collaboration with KDE developers. When it was ready, Gnome Shell said they had decided to do something different altogether. It's a little perverse to be accused of being uncollaborative when you:
o discuss work in advance with the Gnome team and get a go-ahead to drive forward
The dynamics of collaboration in open source are fluid and complex. There's a lot that happens which is constructive, and there are also things that make everyone want to despair. But it's simply inaccurate to paint one group as a primary bad guy; much just depends on who was where at the time.
Untz: Results of the App Installer meeting, and some thoughts on cross-distro collaboration Posted Jan 26, 2011 9:39 UTC (Wed) by oldtomas (guest, #72579) [Link]
Yes. As dlang said, there are many creative ways projects can cooperate, and things become really interesting in the realm of Free Software. The important part is to stay in touch and try to talk to others while implementing new stuff (watch, for example, the Emacs vs. XEmacs cooperation these days. When introducing changes, thought goes into how those changes can benefit both).
Things which come to mind cross-distro:
* Abstract package structure (which attributes, what's a dependency, etc.)
No need to be directly able to install an RPM in Debian (although even this is somewhat possible these days!)
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