Re: Netsaint Debian packages

On Sat, 2002-11-02 at 07:24, Ben Bell wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 01, 2002 at 08:54:10AM +0100, Zeno Davatz wrote:
> > - Do you recommend installing the Debian package of Netsaint or do you
> > recommend compiling from source? Are the Debian packages up to date and
> > stable or are the buggy?
> 
> I was the initial maintainer of the Debian packages of NetSaint, but a
> change of job has left me without the time to devote to them. They are now
> maintained by [email protected].
> 
> My advice with any question of this sort is to try the packages for your
> distribution. As they have been built specifically for the distribution
> they should be more consistent with the way that dist does things, and any
> problems or features should already have been considered. This is
> particularly the case with Debian (plug, plug).
> 
> In practice, some packages are always buggy. With Debian you can look at
> http://bugs.debian.org/netsaint and http://bugs.debian.org/netsaint-plugins
> (any package names will work) and see what the current bug list looks like.
> 
> Arguably you get a "better" install if you use a distribution's package,
> but you are at the mercy of the package maintainer. Another alternative
> would be to get the Debian source and compile it from that to get the
> best of both worlds, but you would be somewhat on your own with regards
> support from this list. If you do decide to take that option though, contact
> me off list and I'll try to find time to answer any questions you have.

I'd like to pipe in with another comment on distributions vs. packages.

Firstly, good packages take skill and time. Reconciling OS vendor
practices with the code base jdoesn't just happen. And it's real
important, because whatever packaging system you use, many users and
sysadmins will not have the time to compile all their software from
source. Convenience is part of world domination.

That being said, packages are in essence little mini code forks. Now
code forks aren't alwys bad, nor are they always good. But I submit that
they are bad when they discover bugs that do not get directly
communicated back to the application programmers. Packages allows this
to happen if the packagers don't take the time to work with the
devlopers. Developers alow this to happen when they don't respect the
enormous value added by good packaging.

So whichever route you take, please make sure that your converstaions
are held in a public forum so we can all benefit.

--
Karl



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