Temporary REVU package storage

[Reinhard Tartler]

Thomas Leonard <talex5 at gmail.com> writes:

>> There are over 7,000 bugs filed against packages in Universe and
>> Multiverse.  Add to that hundreds of packages that possibly 1 individual
>> thinks should be added to the archive.  And this is all to be supported
>> by a few dozen volunteer MOTUs?  Many of whom have full-time RL
>> jobs/school/wives/husbands/girlfriends/boyfriends/children, etc.
>
>> Tell me how we are supposed to manage that?
>
> You can't. But, these people still need a way to distribute their 
> programs. If someone makes a package that's only useful to 10 Ubuntu 
> users in the whole world, then the only recommended way to get it to them 
> is to get it into Universe. Yet, the full review process doesn't make 
> sense for such a small audience.
>
> How about suggesting that these packagers first create a Zero Install 
> package (http://0install.net) and maintain that on their own web-site for 
> a while? Then MOTU could *invite* authors of desirable packages to get 
> them into Universe, rather than having people submit everything and the 
> reviewers being too polite to turn them away?

0install doesn't teach contributors how to package and integrate their
package in the rest of the distribution. I doesn't help to establish a
communication with other ubuntu developers either. Both points are IMO
important.

I'd rather see them maintaining their package in their PPA on
launchpad. This way the maintainers are automatically forced to package
things properly.

> This is similar to the development model used in the distributed version 
> control systems: let people publish whatever they want on their own site 
> and the 'official' maintainer pulls the bits they want. If you don't have 
> to be accepted by MOTU to distribute packages with security, updates, 
> dependency handling, etc then there's less pressure to get every trivial 
> package in Universe in the first place.

This applies to the PPA approach as well.

-- 
Gruesse/greetings,
Reinhard Tartler, KeyID 945348A4