The debian-private mailing list leak, part 1. Volunteers have complained about Blackmail. Lynchings. Character assassination. Defamation. Cyberbullying. Volunteers who gave many years of their lives are picked out at random for cruel social experiments. The former DPL's girlfriend Molly de Blanc is given volunteers to experiment on for her crazy talks. These volunteers never consented to be used like lab rats. We don't either. debian-private can no longer be a safe space for the cabal. Let these monsters have nowhere to hide. Volunteers are not disposable. We stand with the victims.

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: FreeLinux project



> Hmmm. Every time I encounter a badly assembled Debian package 
> (ucbmpeg being the latest, still apparently libc4 and old source format) I
> think, "Hell, this is sloppy, we need more rigour in the Debian project".

Raul Miller just re-appeared, so suppose that one will be fixed.

> I'm beginning to think that if being called fascist is the worst that'll
> happen, we should go for a far more rigid set of rules on what can and
> can't go onto the FTP site:

I agree we need a bit more control - I think it just comes down to 
housekeeping, really.
 
> a) if dpkg-source -x <foo> doesn't extract working, buildable source,
>    it doesn't qualify. This means no more old style tarfiles.

I agree.  dpkg-buildpackage makes it way to easy to make source packages
that don't work.  After a few bad experiences with other people's
packages, I now check all my packages to make sure they extract
before I upload.  It only takes a minute to run dpkg-source -x in a
temp directory and watch for errors.  Klee is going to make a
proposal to overhaul the source packaging scheme, sometime soon.

> b) if the source doesn't compile cleanly (preferably with -Wall & 
>    -Werror where possible) it doesn't qualify.

I agree.  But over time (a year or two), many development packages
change (ie. libc), so it's pretty likely that things will break.  Perhaps
source dependencies would fix this?

> c) if the package conffiles break some existing configuration without
>    at least checking and informing the administrator, it doesn't qualify.
>    Recently I lost all module support because of a broken package.

The whole conffile thing has to be revisited.  It would be nice to
have the option of popping into an editor, to view the diffs, and
optionally edit the new or old conffile.  The Windows 3.1 install used
to allow you to do this when modifying AUTOEXEC.BAT (for gosh sake). 
 
> Quite honestly, some of the discussion on this list has really 
> put me off the idea of Debian. It's getting to the point where
> I'd rather get the original sources down and integrate them into
> my system by hand, than rely on packages with broken dependencies,
> broken security bugs and broken configuration. What use is a logo
> if it doesn't work?

The source packaging scheme needs an overall (as I was carrying
on about in debian-devel).  That should fix up most of your gripes.
 
> Now, I know we're talking about free software here, but doesn't
> anyone have any pride in what they do anymore?

I do.  :-)
 
Cheers,

 - Jim


Attachment: pgpv4fxcS1P9u.pgp
Description: PGP signature