[Bug 1036433] [NEW] Packaging system no longer meets users needs

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dpkg/apt-get are becoming ineffective at meeting users and developers
needs for package management.

An increasing number of important software has been abandoned from the
repos because of rapid development cycles and the difficulty of creating
packages (e.g. ruby and ruby gems, sagemath). The current recommendation
is to install this software separately and therefore forgo the essential
benefits of using a package manager.

In addition much more software is being installed directly from source
control (i.e. github), often for new, small programs, sometimes
undergoing rapid development. Creating a package (even with
checkinstall) and using uupdate is far too difficult to do something so
trivial.

Despite other shortcomings other package managers are more flexible in their ability to handle building new versions of software and with less package-development overhead. pacman and emerge are two examples of package managers that
1. can much more easily build software from source control, even using HEAD if desired.
2. are far easier to write packages for (and therefore it is more likely for packages to be written and kept current even for high velocity software).
3. are far easier to create custom-patched software (I know that developers often have to run modified software with patches that have not yet or will not be incorporated upstream).

Note that sagemath is available via the package manager in arch but not
in Ubuntu.

The point isn't that these other package managers are better overall but
only that they handle an increasingly important use case far better than
does dpkg/apt, although it is clear there is room for improvement.

It is also understood that installing bleeding edge, rapidly changing or
otherwise unstable software should not be done indiscriminately.
However, users and especially developers normally want to do this in
select cases and apt makes it very difficult.

Ubuntu/Debian need to come up with a plan to create a more flexible
package manager that accommodates the changes in the way software is
being installed today.

** Affects: dpkg (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

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Packaging system no longer meets users needs
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1036433
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