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

[Prasenjit Kapat]

Hi,

On 4/30/09, meik michalke <meik.michalke at uni-duesseldorf.de> wrote:
> hi thomas,
>
> am Donnerstag, 30. April 2009 (23:40) schrieb Thomas Friedrichsmeier:
>> I have the hint of a bad feeling about distributing contributed binaries.
>
> i can fully understand that. if a packager makes a mistake, it will probably
> not fall back to him/her, but the project.
>
>> 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.
>
> i too think there should be a distinct line between official and contributed
> packages. they could just reside in an special folder with a README pointing
> out that this is contributed material and if something fails it's probably
> not
> rkward's fault. users could be advised to contact the contributers first if
> they run into problems.

On principle this works, but a person who reads the README file,
probably is well aware of all the niceties. It is always the naive
user, who either apt-get installs or uses a GUI manager to insall,
will not read the README file!

> by the way, i put up my packages into my own repo because i thought that
> this
> makes it obvious they are not officially distributed, but at the same time
> as
> easy as possible to use for anyone who'd like to try. and i'm willing to
> deal
> with problems someone has with these packages, if it's a packaging issue.

OK, I am just floating an idea out - why not go for a Launchpad+PPA
archive for all the (K)Ubuntu related packages. It may be "governed"
by a group of volunteer packagers who use (K)Ubuntu. [this will
include me, and hopefully Meik]. The benefit here is that we'll have a
unified place for all the ubuntu packages.

>> 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_Scrip
>>ts (or
>> http://apps.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/rkward/index.php?title=Binaries_and_B
>>uild_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).

I vote for this too (with ample documentation)... I like the visual
appeal of mediawiki very much. But again, we should try and avoid
duplicating/conflicting the documentation between rkward.sf.net and
this mediawiki.

-- 
Prasenjit