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RE[4]: Good Article
by segedunum on Fri 6th Oct 2006 17:11 UTC in reply to "RE[3]: Good Article"
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Excuse me, but when did you prove it doesn't scale ? Like I said, the repository will accept your package just fine.

It doesn't scale because it's entirely dependant on the developer resources available to package up for each repository and each distribution, whereas if you just provide a generic package it's done for everyone.

I could give you the big ones (KDE and Gnome) which are updated nearly instantly, because you see, KDE and Gnome devs make the effort to provide their product to distro.

You really have no clue at all. Gnome and KDE developers do no packaging whatsoever for distros. Canonical, Suse and other distros have entire teams of people that package up Gnome and KDE for their respective distros and repositories.

What are Canonical and all these other distros going to do? Employ teams of people to package up specific fringe, but popular, software and maintain it? Are they going to package up all the potential properietary software as well? It's just not viable, or scalable.

BS ! There are for EVERY distro out there.

So if I create a package for Fedora it will install on Ubuntu and Suse? Errrr. No.

You need only support one or two most of the popular distro package system.

Well no. You don't just port to a package management system, but you're also porting to different distributions, or even different versions of the same distribution.

If that's the case then they're going to port to Suse and Red Hat and leave Ubuntu out in the cold, aren't they?

That's completely false. No Windows app can install itself without the vendor packaging the software, stop your BS please.

I never said otherwise. You're just seeing things which aren't there.

There are even several different package makers (4 or 5) for Windows. It's no different than a distro package.

Except that you can create a package quickly and easily for Windows, with a GUI front-end for configuration, and it will install. When there are four or five package managers, and distributions, then you have to port to those four or five.

If you look at a Windows installer, no one looks the same, and some are even completely custom

So what? It installs.

You don't even know what you're talking about. A package manager is exactly what you're describing. Apparently, you don't understand the two words package and manager. Package manager go hand in hand with repositories...

Except that has nothing to do with what you replied to, namely that application developers are not going to package their software up for umpteen different distros, package management systems and repositories.

there is no need to package for umpteen different distro

Oh, so you can take a package designed for Red Hat and install on Suse or Ubuntu and all these problems don't exist? Errrr, no you can't.

you need to support 2 package systems at most

Suse's RPMs are different to Red Hat's RPMs which are different to Debian's DEBs that are different to Ubuntu's DEBs.

Plus, you can't wrap your head around that you're not just supporting different package systems, but making packages for different distros and different versions of the same distro with different binary compatibility requirements and different dependencies.

Why on Earth do you think third parties create statically linked installation packages that are the size of Brazil?

It's a mess.

you can use the load of installers available (Loki being the oldest one, autopackage, ...)

There isn't centralised support for those within any distributions, which is kind of Mark Shuttleworth's point. He doesn't want anything to do with them.

Already done : rpm, deb, there are others too. It's tiring already.

Errrr, that's kind of the point. There are too many different package management systems, and even the RPM and DEB systems are different between Suse, Red Hat, Debian and Ubuntu. What is required is for distributors to run with something like Autopackage for anything beyond the core software of their system, so that developers can make one package and have it available for everyone.

Perhaps against people like you that don't even know what is available and spread lies.

Well, the latest version of Bacula certainly isn't available for Dapper, and that isn't a lie. The application developers just don't have the resources, and telling them to port to Ubuntu and every other distro out there isn't going to help.

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