[TriLUG] package management pitfalls

[Brandon Van Every]

On Fri, Nov 9, 2012 at 5:10 PM, Brandon Van Every <bvanevery at gmail.com>wrote:

>
> Does anyone else think that having a built-in systemic bias towards
> massive amounts of OS version testing, and disruptions if you are a third
> party and don't do that testing, coming down the pipe every 6 months, is
> insane?  Cynically, you could say it awards Canonical a great deal of
> control over the "free" (beer) open source ecology.  The small PPA provider
> will never keep up.
>

Oh heck these http://kiwix.org/index.php/Ubuntu_PPA guys don't even have a
*Precise* repository, forget Quantal.
http://ppa.launchpad.net/kiwixteam/ppa/ubuntu/dists/ shows this has been
true since July 2011.  1.5 years and I guess these guys decided they're not
doing any special packaging for Ubuntu anymore.  So to recap the flaws of
packaging:

- the format is standards specific.  Compare .deb and .rpm
- the repositories are distro specific.  Compare Debian to Ubuntu
- the repositories are distro *release* specific.  Compare Natty to Precise
to Quantal, every 6 months.

That's a lot of redundant labor and fragmentation.  It's no wonder third
parties don't keep up.


Cheers,
Brandon Van Every