Re: [Chicken-users] RedHat and Debian packages

[Pupeno]

I think the problem is thinking about Linux as an OS, it is just a kernel. If 
we considered RedHat as different to Debian, as FreeBSD is to Plan 9, then 
we'd be delighted of how compatible they are and how easy it is to port from 
one to the other.
The same thing happens with Schemes, one could argue that the Scheme comunity 
is very fragmented because a program for Chicken Scheme takes a lot to work 
to run in Scheme 48, yet, if you consider Chicken Scheme as different to 
Scheme 48 as Perl and PHP are, then it is quite good that rewriting a program 
in Chicken Scheme when it was written in Scheme 48 doesn't take a huge 
effort.
What we could argue is that the free software comunity is very disperse and 
indeed it is, but that is because it is a comunity... every comunity is 
disperse... you have people using Debian, others using FreeBSD, others using 
Ubuntu, others using OpenBSD, all different OS... you have people using C, 
others C++, many use Python and there are a bunch of freaks using that 
language with lots of parethesis. But arguing about it doesn't get us 
anywhere because it won't change it. Each part of the comunity is totally 
independent and chooses to go in a different direction. One could try to 
unite parts of the comunity and indeed, for example, Ubuntu united a big part 
of the desktop comunity.
I believe that this is a disavantage, but also an advantage because it helps 
the comunity survive. In your particular case, if someone distributes some 
program only as RPM, then they are making a big mistake by supporting only 
one distribution. You should ask them to also distribute a tar.gz or tar.bz2 
with the sources that can be compiled more or less anywhere. Submit bugs when 
you can't compile it in your platform and submit bugs about packaging to your 
OS provider (be it Debian, Ubuntu, RedHat or Suse). It actually works very 
well. I have submitted lots of these bugs and I've got lot's of packages 
included in different distros. Obviously it helps if you provide an initial 
package to work with.

On Monday January 15 2007 04:04, Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
> Harri Haataja wrote:
> > On 12/01/07, Peter Busser <address@hidden> wrote:
> >> Integrating these packages in Debian means that only Debian users
> >> benefit from this effort. My idea is to support as many distributions as
> >> possible, not only Debian. That way this effort benefits users of
> >> Adamantix,
> >> Ubuntu, Progeny, Knoppix, etc., etc. as well, not just users of
> >> Debian. And
> >> it has the following advantages for Chicken users:
> >
> > But sadly many of those may have a completely different (and possibly
> > ancient) version in themselves that the installer and possibly the
> > packager has to work around or clash with.
>
> The fragmentation in the Linux world is ridiculous.  I'm on my 4th OS
> installation attempt in 3 weeks, trying to get either dual boot or
> triple boot systems going, because of RedHat vs. Debian issues.  All the
> Cell SDK stuff is RPM based, and it hadn't dawned on me that I simply
> couldn't use Debian.  Not unless I wanted to rebuild all the packages
> from scratch, which probably wouldn't work, and would be very time
> consuming even if it did.  So to get the various Linuxes to play ok with
> each other, I'm becoming far more of a boot and partition expert than I
> ever wanted to be.
>
> I hope CMake / CPack starts performing some miracles sometime, because
> otherwise, I couldn't possibly take Linux packaging seriously.  It's way
> too much of a mess.
>
>
> Cheers,
> Brandon Van Every
>
>
>
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-- 
Pupeno <address@hidden> (http://pupeno.com)

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