Re: debian/ in GNOME CVS

[Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org>]

<quote who="Malcolm Tredinnick">

> Does this really achieve any goal (releasing into sid)? The list of
> packages proposed for the alpha platform release is a bunch of libraries
> and no applications.

More eyes, shallow bugs. It's pithy, but there's merit in it.

Given that it's "just a buncha libraries", it means that there isn't
anything for people to gawk at, or that will actively break their system.
You seem to take a different view here:

> My worry here is that something which is really "libraries for developers
> only and is for API stability to help porting begin" may be misinterpreted
> as a GNOME 2.0 pre-release or something equally confusing if people get it
> by default the next time they do a
> "run-magic-program-that-installs-stuff-from-the-net-on-my-Debian-box".
> Are we ready to handle that kind of PR?

We are, but is Debian? The libraries will only install if you ask them to,
sans the "go and fossick for them on ftp and fix their dependencies" step.
There's nothing magic about apt.

I imagine that we'd be telling Debian Weekly News and other places about the
packages being available (as part of the PR we'd do anyway), but it's all up
to the user as to whether they find it interesting enough to install.

There's not much difference between putting packages in sid and putting them
on an ftp site. It's just quicker, a 'closer' method of distribution.

> I guess if all of Havoc's patches to allow parallel installs have gone in
> it won't cause too much grief.

It simply won't happen if the platform alpha can't be installed in parallal.

> But at least package the message-of-doom (or a slightly more correct
> version now that it is meant to build and things won't conflict with 1.0
> series stuff) into the docs.

dh_make will do this automatically. Or is that automagically... ;)

- Jeff

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