[rkward-devel] How to deal with binary packages?

[Thomas Friedrichsmeier]

Hi,

I've wanted to put this to discussion for quite some time, but never got 
around to writing this mail. Here it comes:

By now a nice number of people is producing binary packages of the rkward 
releases for various distributions and architectures. That is a wonderful 
thing, and I really appreciate this work. At the same time I don't quite know 
what to do with those packages. Several of you have offered to put them up on 
the web somewhere, or suggested for me to put them in the download list, or 
in general asked me, where to announce these packages. I'm afraid, I've 
probably left a good number of such mails unanswered - simply because I 
didn't really know myself.

The issues is:
I have the hint of a bad feeling about distributing contributed binaries. With 
some of the packagers I've been in contact for a long time, and some I've 
even met in real life. Others are completely unknown to me. Some packages are 
for standard distributions, some are backports for older distributions, some 
for updated versions of R, etc. Every once in a while, two people have 
created two packages for the same distribution, and I have no idea, which is 
better.
It seems to me that somewhere I should draw a line between more "official" 
packages that I feel comfortable distributing, and supporting, and "other" 
packages that I don't really know too much about. In want of a better 
criterion, so far that meant, I uploaded the packages that I created myself, 
but no others. 

At the same time, that approach seems a bit disrespectful to the hard work of 
the packagers. And of course, it does not really help users in search of a 
binary for their distribution / architecture.

So how to handle this?
1) Upload all contributed packages to the sourceforge download page. In case 
this is your favorite, there's a catch, though: I'd like to delegate most of 
the work to another person. Making file-releases is a cumbersome process, 
already, and I don't want it to take up yet more of my time. Volunteers?

1b) Upload to a regular directory on an HTTP-server (like 
http://rkward.sf.net/temp/). Possibly slightly easier to handle, but still 
I'd like to delegate that task.

2) Have most packages hosted somewhere else, and simply keep a list of links 
to those packages. Somewhat similar to 
http://rkward.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php?title=Binaries_and_Build_Scripts 
(or 
http://apps.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/rkward/index.php?title=Binaries_and_Build_Scripts 
in the new wiki). However, we'd probably re-organize this page a bit, and try 
to make it more prominent (by advertising it as the primary download page).

3) Something else?

What do you - and especially the packagers - think?

Regards
Thomas
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