Recommending people Snap things in response to valid packaging problems (WAS: Re: need help resolving python-setuptools backport fail)

[Mark Shuttleworth]

On 12/06/2017 05:43 PM, Simon Quigley wrote:
> I guess maybe I'm not a fan of the fact that now apparently the standard
> solution to "I'm having this interesting packaging problem, any ideas?"
> is now "have you tried packaging the thing in this completely different
> packaging format that oversimplifies things?" because it doesn't really
> help the people who want to learn and work on actual packaging (as
> opposed to putting everything in a yaml file) and it completely avoids
> the actual problem at hand.

Well, hold on.

First, we continue to do a ton of SRUs and backporting in the deb world.
Your characterization is simply incorrect, and I hope you'll agree after
a cup of tea and a walk :)

Second, the *actual* problem you stated is that you want to make a newer
version of offlineimap available to Ubuntu users. And Ogra (who has been
an Ubuntu developer as long as I have been an Ubuntu user ;))
recommended that you try snaps, which solve that problem perfectly. They
solve that problem for 14.04, 16.04, and current 18.04 too, which is
very elegant.

The deb world is wonderful. But backporting trees of Python dependencies
is risky for a LOT of software and a LOT of users. Sometimes it's the
right answer, hopefully you would agree that in this case, perhaps
digging into that snap is worth considering. Another community member
has already made one for you to try.

The great thing about Ubuntu is that it consists of lots of people who
have *different* interests, and occasionally they can teach each other
stuff. You've helped LOTS of people learn stuff too :)

Mark

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