Re: Interesting dpkg issue, plus thoughts...

[Klee Dienes <klee@mit.edu>]

Christoph Lameter <clameter@waterf.org> writes:

> for awhile now. You have certainly done quite a bit for dpkg but it does
> not seem to be enough to clean out all the problems we have. 

No, it's definitely not enough yet.  But then, I'm just getting started.  :-).

>>much to be done.  As always, I welcome the assistance of anyone who
>>would like to help me in my efforts.  Contact me privately, and I can
>>suggest one of at least a dozen places to contribute.

> Look through the bug archive. There is one or the other patch from
> me there. I dont have much time for that anymore but I used to half a year
> ago.

Absolutely.  In fact, I think there have been several, not to mention
your work on debmake, which (as used by 'alien') has already saved me
several weeks work in doing the MkLinux bringup.

Those last two sentences in my original message were an exhortation to
the Debian developer community at large, not directed at you
personally.  Please accept my apologies for the ambiguity.

> And in the last months I have grown rather skeptical regarding dpkgs
> future. I tend to think more and more that we have build an excellent file
> system structure and tools but it might be wise to keep the structure and
> dump the package manager.

That's certainly one valid opinion.  Personally, I tend to think that
the effort required to improve dpkg is far less than the effort
required to switch package managers in mid-stream, and will result in
a much better finished product.  But I certainly acknowledge that
reasonable minds may disagree.

[And here I am again speaking to the entire developer community:]

Having used most of them, I believe that dpkg is the one of the finest
package managers available, and believe that it has more potential
than any other package manager I have seen to date.

I also agree that dpkg needs a great deal of work to realize its full
potential, and that a lot of work remains to be done.

Fortunately, there are a number of volunteers currently working to
improve dpkg.  I am one such volunteer, the Deity group is another,
and I continue to get excellent patches from a number of current
Debian developers.

Our progress is slow, but it is certainly happening.  If you'd like to
see it go faster, why not join us?  Contact me and I'd be happy to
suggest a way you can contribute.  Or just pick something that bothers
you and send me a patch that fixes it.  Quality in free software, like
quality in all software, happens a single line of code at a time.


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