On 6/29/06, Ryan Heise <ryan@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Thu, Jun 29, 2006 at 06:24:04AM -0700, Mark Knecht wrote: > > Problems with developers trying to maintain packages: > > > > - Too many package formats. > > - Too complicated package formats. > > > > But developers should (I think) take on the responsibility to make > > things easier for users. > > Sorry for having created some kind of problem here. Andrew asked. I > responded. Next time I guess I stay quiet. Hi Mark, I had to check the archives to see which emails you were referring to. They are not the ones I was replying to, so there is no problem in my eyes. My comments were of a general nature and aimed to contrast the problems "users" have building packages with the problems "developers" have building packages. What I hope the two contrasting views show is that the package systems are the real source of the problem, and it is the "developers" who can fix it. (Not Aqualung developers, but distribution developers)
I am just a user.
I don't think users should ever have to install -dev packages or compile source code. And if it were easy for developers to build and release up-to-date packages, then users wouldn't have to do this.
AFAICT that is a distro specific decision. On FC I have to, and I guess you guys on Debian have to also. On Gentoo I do not, AFAICT. However, quite often in the last 12 months the Gentoo devs are refusing to add specific versions of libraries to portage so you find yourself having to build a library from source and tell portage you've done it. At least with portage I can do this very easily. In fact, for Jack, for a long time, I ran Jack outside of portage but told portage it was on the machine which eliminated dependency issues. It's essentialy not possible on FC as far as I know. (Or care to know...) Maybe as users we to understand the decisions involved around these things before picking a distro. Then there are no suprises. - Mark
