Debian: We do have our "store" but we have the doors guarded ;-)

Posted Jan 4, 2011 20:02 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313)
In reply to: Debian: We do have our "store" but we have the doors guarded ;-) by drag
Parent article: Free Software: the road to a Universal bundle, a powerful app store, and world domination (Free Software Magazine)

you are contradicting yourself when you say that the existing package management is horrible and then talk about how wonderful PPAs are to have.

PPAs are very much tied in to the existing packaging system, and the fact that you are so happy with them while being so pro app store indicates to me that the package managers that linux has _can_ do the job, if we use them properly.

the PPAs tie in and use the existing ubuntu libraries and dependancies, they _don't_ try to install their own versions of libraries or be stand-alone installs.

it's pretty easy to package something up to be a stand-alone install, but still tie in to a package manager. If you can compile the project statically linked you eliminate almost all dependancies, and you can use something like checkinstall to do 90+% of the work of packaging it for all of the major distros.

Debian: We do have our "store" but we have the doors guarded ;-)

Posted Jan 4, 2011 20:26 UTC (Tue) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (2 responses)

> you are contradicting yourself when you say that the existing package management is horrible and then talk about how wonderful PPAs are to have. PPAs are very much tied in to the existing packaging system, and the fact that you are so happy with them while being so pro app store indicates to me that the package managers that linux has _can_ do the job, if we use them properly.

No. Because I am complaining about the bad design of distributions, not their use of package management.

Package management is all fine and dandy, but its the subtle differences in distributions and the huge amounts of duplicated effort is that it causes is the problem. Removing barriers between developers and users is something distributions should strive for.

> the PPAs tie in and use the existing ubuntu libraries and dependancies, they _don't_ try to install their own versions of libraries or be stand-alone installs.

Some do.

The advantage of PPA's is that they do not require the developers to go through anything like FTP masters so it is a lot easier to get packages to end users in a fast fashion.

Getting rid of the requirements for Debian or Ubuntu membership and getting rid of ftp masters is a big win and that sort of thing is something all distributions should be aiming for.

> it's pretty easy to package something up to be a stand-alone install, but still tie in to a package manager. If you can compile the project statically linked you eliminate almost all dependancies, and you can use something like checkinstall to do 90+% of the work of packaging it for all of the major distros.

I already install a lot of software that is dynamic AND works just fine across lots of different distributions. Compiling everything to be statically is no more of a solution then requiring every individual to compile their software from scratch.

What I am getting at is that the lack of giving a shit about binary compatibility is a huge liability for Linux systems. Not caring about it, not designing for it, and not taking it into consideration the negative effects this causes the end users and third party developers is the problem. It hurts users and it hurts developers and whether or not the source code for those applications is available is entirely mute.

Distributions should provide packages for core items and the system and should worry about providing reliable set dependences that other developers and users can build off of how ever they see fit. They should care about having packages that install across multiple systems properly.

What constitutes a "core" component and what constitutes the API and such things are questions that need to be answered. Probably modular, but not terribly fine grained.

Distributions should be taking the same approach that Linux kernel developers do and set up a set of boundaries between what they consider to be their job and what they consider to be external interfaces. Only change APIs/ABIs when they have no other choice. Like Linux developers they should have the ability to remain fluid and be able to do what they want with the system in order to improve performance, fix bugs, and improve features.

And like Linux kernel developers they need to keep in mind that binary compatibility and external interfaces should be respected.

Debian: We do have our "store" but we have the doors guarded ;-)

Posted Jan 4, 2011 20:45 UTC (Tue) by yarikoptic (guest, #36795) [Link]

> Getting rid of the requirements for Debian or Ubuntu membership and
> getting rid of ftp masters is a big win and that sort of thing is
> something all distributions should be aiming for.
ROFL -- must be a quote of the month.
replies could stop here

Debian: We do have our "store" but we have the doors guarded ;-)

Posted Jan 4, 2011 20:47 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

the problem is seldom binary compatibility (the fact that you have installed a lot of software with dependancies without a problem is proof of that, I've done the same thing)

the bigger problem is with two things

1. what optional features are enabled in this distro vs the distro that the application developers use

and

2. what other packages are needed (defining the dependancies)

PPAs avoid some of the distro packaging issues, but they don't avoid these two issues.

most people who are advocating the app store approach seem to want it to magically solve these two problems, and the only way to do this is to eliminate depenancies by packaging everything that you depend on with the package.

as for the high number of android apps, if they were really that useful, why hasn't someone created an android emulator that can run on your desktop and use all of them? In my experiance, most of the android and iphone apps are things that on a normal PC you would just have a browser bookmark for. Yes there are many real apps that do not fall into this category, but for every "real" app there are tens to hundreds that are better off as bookmarks.

Debian: We do have our "store" but we have the doors guarded ;-)

Posted Jan 6, 2011 13:54 UTC (Thu) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link]

And by linking statically you build too large packages, and create incompatililities with the other packages on the system (and security risks). That has too many downsides to be realistic for non-hobby use.