Packaging Rust for Fedora
Packaging Rust for Fedora
Posted Oct 30, 2022 11:22 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252)In reply to: Packaging Rust for Fedora by dvdeug
Parent article: Packaging Rust for Fedora
> Uncurated ones?
Yes. Maybe we have different definition of word “curated”? I go with normal one: carefully chosen and thoughtfully organized or presented. And chosen is critical part.
> Yes, there's a lot less control over what goes into those AppStores than what goes into a Linux distro, but there's a lot more control by Microsoft and co. than there was previously.But there are, really, no curation. There are rules, sure. But they are uniform. There are no selection process which may decide whether fork of some product is original enough to be included. Programs are not renamed simply because some obscure program took their name first.
You can find curation in these stores, too, BTW. The list of libraries included in Android, iOS, macOS, Windows… it's curated by any definition. But distros manage to combine worst sides of curated and uncurated process! You have to convince them to include your app or library by doing certain, quite atrocious, things… and you you can not be certain that it would be available in that distribution! It must be installed separately and you can not even easily direct user to the store where he needs to just click “Install” to get another app!
The rest of your story talks about how good curated distro is for the user who is also a developer… and it's not incorrect. For the user who is also a developer distros are really cool. The only problem: these are extreme rarity novadays.
And for everyone else… distros are awful. They only offer curated software thus you can not get best software (it's not included for various reasons, most often because it just doesn't exist in version for GNU/Linux) and they only offer curated set of libraries thus you often find out that library you want or need is not included, or included in wrong version or can not be included because distro decided that it's duplicating functionality of some other library…
> Rust is probably better in some ways, but code is not going to beat someone compiling it on your arch on your distro and hopefully doing a smoke test and you downloading that for ease of use.Looking on calendar. Is it 2022 or 2002? That issue is solved in the entirely different way today. Linux distros were never a good way to do that because you have to compile something on your arch and your distro (and you forgot your version of that distro, BTW) — and that never happens. There are just too many distros, too many versions to support all that zoo.
Instead you just use docker image to have predictable and reproducible builds.
That's how everyone except people who have already decided to spend insane amount of time to deal with bazillion linux distributions for no good reason are doing it today.
Posted Oct 30, 2022 20:50 UTC (Sun)
by dvdeug (guest, #10998)
[Link]
Given that Apple advertises "the apps we offer are held to the highest standards for privacy, security, and content. Because we offer nearly two million apps — and we want you to feel good about using every single one of them.", "Over 215K submissions rejected last year for violating privacy guidelines." and "Over 1M submissions rejected for objectionable, harmful, unsafe, or illegal content.", all on the front page of the app store, I think Apple is calling themselves curated.
It is fairly easy to become a Debian developer, and they can upload just about anything. Neither the Debian archive or the Apple app store presume to offer only the best word processor or best puzzle game; just all such programs that fit the basic rules and someone with right credentials packaged. I think you're making a lot more distinction then actually exists.
>Programs are not renamed simply because some obscure program took their name first.
Note that apt install snap doesn't install the appstore, it installs the general purpose gene finding program by the same name. You can make a trademark claim on the appstores, as well; note that a search for Tetris on Debian comes up with a lot more stuff calling itself Tetris then the Google Store.
>You have to convince them to include your app or library by doing certain, quite atrocious, things… and you you can not be certain that it would be available in that distribution! It must be installed separately and you can not even easily direct user to the store where he needs to just click “Install” to get another app!
I don't understand what this means.
> The rest of your story talks about how good curated distro is for the user who is also a developer
No. I run the mencoder contained in Debian despite the fact the mplayer developers fume about it. I could download the version from mplayerhq.hu and compile, and have in previous days, but don't feel like jumping through the extra hoops. Non-developer users would find compiling it much harder. Distros mean that you can install a program and it will work on your architecture, with your libraries, and not overwrite anything. (Note that snapd installs /usr/bin/snap, and snap doesn't. a compromise when snapd was added to the archive.) This is the same thing that the other Appstores offer, that any system that delivers source code or generic Linux binaries doesn't. This is what users need whether or not they're developers.
> (it's not included for various reasons, most often because it just doesn't exist in version for GNU/Linux)
? Are you complaining because Linux distributions don't package software that doesn't work on Linux?
> they only offer curated set of libraries thus you often find out that library you want or need is not included, or included in wrong version or can not be included because distro decided that it's duplicating functionality of some other library…
Non-developers never want to install a library. That's part of the advantage of distributions, that they never have to worry about installing libraries, they're automatically handled for them. They also keep the libraries up-to-date. so you aren't running an version of the libraries with known issues.
Again, with Debian, I don't recall them rejecting any library because it's duplicating functionality of some other library. If it wants to use the same file names, yes.
> Linux distros were never a good way to do that
To do what? Distros offer code compiled on your arch on your distro on the version of the distro with hopefully at least a smoke test. They do that job quite well.
> Instead you just use docker image to have predictable and reproducible builds.
From what I understand, docker images let you put down a turnkey database or web server on a server. They don't do anything for running various programs on the same X or Wayland screen. There are systems that run a program in its own box with its own libraries, but I have 1906 non-library Debian packages, and don't want to host all those libraries for each one.
Posted Nov 2, 2022 15:11 UTC (Wed)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link]
There is no such selection process distro side either, the sole selection process is finding enough people motivated to build an n-th version of the same thing, and the only way to fail this process is to make building the n-th version too hard compared to the benefits it provided over the (n-1) other versions.
Which, is really easy to do when you are pulling hundreds of other modules which are all needing review individually.
Packaging Rust for Fedora
Packaging Rust for Fedora