[LAD] Releasing source code is not enough, I think...

[Dominique Michel]

Le Tue, 21 Jan 2014 17:11:10 +0000,
Filipe Coelho <falktx at gmail.com> a écrit :

> On 01/21/2014 05:00 PM, Fons Adriaensen wrote:
> > On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 03:34:05PM +0000, Filipe Coelho wrote:
> >
> >> I seriously don't wish any new user to have to put up with this.
> >> It might be easy for us that are now used to this sort of things,
> >> but not for them.
> > Then they should wait until their distro or someone else provides
> > a package. Or pay someone to do the work for them, just as they
> > have to for commercial software, or for the mechanic you mention.
> > Or use a distro that usually provides a shorter release cycle,
> > e.g. Arch (which is not for noobs).
> 
> What about all the freeware software I see in Windows/OSX?
> It's the only way they (software devs) have to get some attention to
> it. afaik no one is paying them.
> 
> I don't think a sane person is willing to wait ~6 months and do a 
> reinstall just for a bug-fix release (in case of Ubuntu).
> 
> >
> >>> Unless that toolchain can magically create packages for all major
> >>> distros (and I'm pretty sure it can't do that), what's the point ?
> >> It won't create packages, it will create binaries - which is what
> >> users are looking for.
> > And how are these installed ? Bypassing the distro package
> > management is a sure recipe for misery. Maybe not immediately, with
> > a bit of luck the binary you just copied to /usr/bin may work. But
> > sooner or later your users will get some serious trouble, because
> > you're messing up their systems. If that's what you want, go on...

It is why at the first place, I shifted to gentoo. When I install a
software myself, I first compile it and install it in /usr/local, but
this is just to see how the installation process work and its
dependencies. After that I remove it and do an ebuild. The result will
be the same, but with the same optimisations than the rest of the
system, and all the files, their dependencies and reverse
dependencies will be managed by portage.

If the software is audio related, I put it into the pro-audio overlay.
Otherwise, I do a bug report with the ebuild on the gentoo bugzilla
most of the times. Sometime I do both.

> >   
> 
> I don't see how this is worse than having the users installing files
> to /usr/local.
> I actually think it's much better, since it won't require root to 
> install. Just run the binary.
> 
> ~/bin also exists, although not all distros use it.
> 

Sure, it will be better than on windows where every thing is
installed at the same place, that with no management of the
libraries, but idiotic questions that even a programmer cannot answer. 
The users will be fine in most cases in the short run, but in the
long run, they will get in troubles.

This is the same problem with all the binary based distributions and
their additional repositories. More repositories you add, more troubles
you will get with broken deps when updating the system. And with files,
and maybe even libraries, installed into /usr/local, this is even
worst, because the system update will be fine, but the result will soon
or later be a broken system.

Dominique