Auto Package

[Sebastien Bacher]

Le mardi 29 mars 2005 à 23:12 +0100, Mike Hearn a écrit :
> On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 23:31:35 +0200, Sebastien Bacher wrote:
> > I'm just curious but what happen in these cases ?
> > 
> > * an user installs gaim 1.2.0 with autopackage which breaks the login on
> > ICQ account in some cases .. where is he supposed to do then ? How does
> > he knows what upstream to contact and how (sf bug tracker ?
> > bugzilla.gnome ? mail ?) ? 
> 
> The Gaim SF bugtracker of course, if an upgrade causes regressions then
> this must be a bug in the software.

And you expect users to know that ? Most of them don't even know where
to send bugs when you have one place for the distribution.


> No, they do what all software vendors do for bugfixes: make a judgement
> call about when the fix should be released. If it's urgent, like a
> regression in ICQ support, a new point release can be done. In fact Gaim
> have done this in the past for things like AIM.

They have not for 1.2.0/ICQ though. What is better for user, an 1.1.4
package which works or 1.2.0 ?


> How would such a bug occur? Often a "distro-specific" bug is really a
> bug caused by a very new or strangely configured version of stock
> software, eg the kernel. So you would have to fix it upstream eventually
> anyway.

There is a lot of reason for bugs. A patch in another component, a lib
version, a default configuration, the build options, ...



> I think you're overestimating how much distribution-specific integration
> your average program requires. There are programs that require a lot but
> they are the exception rather than the rule.

Not sure about that. I know that a majority of the desktop packages are
patched in Ubuntu for different reasons (hal/pmount changes, sudo
integration, UI changes, default configuration, translations, etc ...). 

A quick find in the "desktop" (which is only a part of the GNOME
desktop) directory of the pkg-gnome SVN for Debian:

$ find ./ -name "*.patch" -o -name "*.diff" | grep -v svn | wc -l
129

The same in the "package" directory (some other GNOME packages):

$ find ./ -name "*.patch" -o -name "*.diff" | grep -v svn | wc -l
78

I would not say than patched packages are an exception. 


Cheers,

Sebastien Bacher