Debian debates amd64 port [LWN.net]

Debian debates amd64 port

Posted Jul 23, 2004 11:57 UTC (Fri) by jondkent (subscriber, #19595)
In reply to: Debian debates amd64 port by markc
Parent article: Debian debates amd64 port

I think Debian need to look at how it organises itself and how it releases new versions. As they have inxs if 8k packages and support 11 archs maybe they need to take a look at how Gentoo point releases work. Snapshotting maybe the way forward, i.e. you take all new/updates packages considered stable, merge them with the remainder and release it. This would then become a point release, instead of a r# release. Strict release dates would have to be enforced, say quarterly.

It may be sensible for Debian for review the archs supported to ensure the userbase justifies the workload.

Just my 2 pennies worth

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Debian debates amd64 port

Posted Jul 26, 2004 9:52 UTC (Mon) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link]

When Gentoo's architecture and package count reach anywhere near Debian's, we'll see how well they scale.

Incidentally, Debian's testing distribution (which is where the releases come from) is snapshotted already. This is how releases happen. However, Debian also tries to actually set milestones between releases (ABI transitions, LSB compliance, new installers, etc). I'm not even sure how Gentoo would manage an ABI transition, aside from just breaking all the packages...

Debian debates amd64 port

Posted Jul 29, 2004 12:29 UTC (Thu) by markc (guest, #4419) [Link]

Your points are very academic and technical according to the Debian
mantra. Fine. However I would suggest that 90% of potential users could
not care less about 90% of the points you raise nor for 90% of the
packages that Debian maintains. The 10% of those 8k packages that appear
on the Knoppix CD are the ones that really count over all the rest by at
least a margin of 10:1. The significant and major advantages of using a
Debian based system are apt-get and packages.debian.org, from a users
perspective, elsewise, most everything else about Debian involves dealing
with a brick wall of formality and condescending developers.

BTW, IMHO, Gentoo has some serious flaws too. They don't have an apt-get
for quick and easily installable binary packages and the python +
file-system based "portage" managing code sucks badly and will not scale,
as you point out... but for the prime substance of an end-users
cutting-edge desktop, it is far more uptodate and managable than Debians
"unstable" branch ever could be. Gentoo needs to be rewritten from scratch
using C/C++ for a single apt-get/emerge interface and using SQLite for all
meta-info (ie; fast and extensible). Both Debians and Gentoos update
systems are painfully slow and neither "emerge sync" nor "apt-get update"
will scale to double their current respective sizes. Both systems need to
look at providing diffs for package updates. Debian solved a certain set
of problems managing a linux system, Gentoo solves a different set of
issues for an uptodate desktop but the ideal or "best" distro system does
not yet exist.