openSUSE packagers (was: SUSE, openSUSE, GM, ...)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 houghi wrote:
On Mon, Oct 10, 2005 at 07:39:17PM +0200, Pascal Bleser wrote:
And as far as packagers are concerned, the difference is huge. Besides the Packman team, James Ogley's, 5 or 6 suser-* repositories on gwdg.de and mine... there's near nothing as 3rd party repositories for SUSE Linux. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure there's not much more to it.
Let's start a new thread here... (no, I'm not mistaken in the Subject with "openSUSE", it's about packagers in the openSUSE community, or rather the lack thereof)
The cause of this might be that SUSE always had an enourmous amount of programs already included in its distribution. Only lately the other distros are getting larger and larger as well.
I don't think so. I really don't.
Count the number of packages provided for Debian. Count the packages
available for Fedora (not within the ISOs, I mean everywhere). Have a
look at RPMforge. When you go to a download page of a FOSS project, what
packages do you see: Fedora, Debian, Mandrake, and rarely SUSE Linux
(and when you do, check the site, it's most probably Packman, James,
oc2pus or me).
Dunno why, seems SUSE Linux has never attracted a lot of packagers.
I must say that we've been left standing in the rain a little the past
years, but things are definately looking very good now, and with what
the SUSE staff is planning for the next months, it could very well be
even better than the other distros (no, I won't disclose anything, let's
wait for the concepts to be discussed and confirmed a bit ;)).
Although SUSE Linux ships a huge number of packages, there is still a
lot of stuff that's not included. And I really think that the core
distro should shrink a little (or at least stop growing) because at some
point, quantity would get over quality, and that's definately not what
any of us want. It's up to the openSUSE community to grow more packagers.
As an example, newest versions of many packages are not available for
SUSE, if it wasn't me, the Packman folks and James and a few other
people (in no particuliar order).
It's better to have a large number of packagers who have less work and
take care 110% about a small number of packagers than the opposite.
While I'm probably the most prolific community packager for SUSE Linux
(not as a site, Packman has a lot more, but as a single person), I don't
have the time to test every single one of them (actually, I only test
very few of 'em). I'd very much prefer to scale down to around 20-50
packages, follow them closely, apply patches as they arise, and test
them thouroughly. And eventually, get involved into other FOSS
activities. Maybe it's time for some "pass the torch" thing ;)
I really think that the most of us (as mentioned above) are very good
packagers with a lot of experience with SUSE Linux - we've been doing
this for quite some time - and we should try to find some volunteers
interested in the job and grow a packager community. At least I'm
willing to help, review, coach, whatever, as I'm sure others are. I
believe that we can get some SUSE staffers to give us a hand as well.
You, reading this mail: if you are interested, join
opensuse-packaging@opensuse.org, drop a mail and let's see what we can
achieve.
To me, that's the #1 priority for openSUSE (as a community), but I guess
everyone sees other #1 priorities ;))
(and that's good, it not only shows there's still work to do to leverage
our community (at least in numbers) but also that we actually have ideas
on how to do that)
cheers
- --
-o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/
/\\
On Mon, Oct 10, 2005 at 09:08:06PM +0200, Pascal Bleser wrote:
Although SUSE Linux ships a huge number of packages, there is still a lot of stuff that's not included.
I agree. However in the past if you bought SUSE there was already so much in it that that starting to make your own was not really worth it, Perhaps another reason was that the chance of getting officuially into the SUSE distro wre prestty slim. Also for a lot of people, using the Mandiva or RedHat rpm's (or other RPM's) just worked out of the box. Why would somebody start making an rpm package for each and every distro around. If I made a SUSE rpm, it won't be available for Mandrake, RedHat, Debian, ...
And I really think that the core distro should shrink a little (or at least stop growing) because at some point, quantity would get over quality, and that's definately not what any of us want. It's up to the openSUSE community to grow more packagers.
Stop growing, because people expect SUSE to be humongous. It is as if SUSE as a distro goes to eleven with the number of included packages.
To me, that's the #1 priority for openSUSE (as a community), but I guess everyone sees other #1 priorities ;)) (and that's good, it not only shows there's still work to do to leverage our community (at least in numbers) but also that we actually have ideas on how to do that)
I really, really, really would love to see a lot of maintainers for one huge repo, which everybody (after some quilification) can link they YaST to, to get anything they like. That way it can already be added at instalation. This would mean: 1 link to the instalation data (be it HD, DVD, FTP or whatever) 1 link to /usr/src/packages/RPMS (1) 1 link to the online sources 1 link to the online official release 1 link to the online addidional packags What should be standard o or off is another discusion, first get it implemented. They should also be the same links (yes, multiple) for YOU. (1) This could already be implemented. Need people to explain to run createrepo /usr/src/packages/RPMS and put createrepo on the first 5 CD's houghi -- Quote correct (NL) http://www.briachons.org/art/quote/ Zitiere richtig (DE) http://www.afaik.de/usenet/faq/zitieren Quote correctly (EN) http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 houghi wrote:
On Mon, Oct 10, 2005 at 09:08:06PM +0200, Pascal Bleser wrote:
Although SUSE Linux ships a huge number of packages, there is still a lot of stuff that's not included.
I agree. However in the past if you bought SUSE there was already so much in it that that starting to make your own was not really worth it, Perhaps
If I had thought that, there wouldn't be my repository today ;)
another reason was that the chance of getting officuially into the SUSE distro wre prestty slim. Also for a lot of people, using the Mandiva or
It was near nought, indeed.
RedHat rpm's (or other RPM's) just worked out of the box. Why would somebody start making an rpm package for each and every distro around.
Because that's just not true at all. Most Redhat/Fedora/Mandriva/whatever RPMs won't work on SUSE Linux, because each distribution has its own idiosyncrasies about where to install certain files (*), the names of the libraries (dependencies) (**), the available versions of libraries (dependencies) (***), how to configure and run daemons (****), etc... (*) e.g. KDE and GNOME: /opt/kde3, /opt/gnome for SUSE, /usr for Fedora/RH (**) e.g. kdelibs3 on SUSE, kdelibs on Fedora (***) e.g. GNOME 2.10 on FCx, GNOME 2.4 on SUSE (****) different init scripts, sysconfig files on SUSE For the simplest of packages, it might work (e.g. sed or awk) but for others, it definately won't work properly. At best, the file locations are plain wrong but it kinda works anyway, at worse, you can't even install the package because the dependencies are totally different.
If I made a SUSE rpm, it won't be available for Mandrake, RedHat, Debian, ...
Yes. And ? That's the whole point of making RPMs for SUSE Linux. Same goes for the others: if you do a Debian package, it won't be available for Mandriva, Redhat, Fedora, SUSE. If you do a Mandriva package, it won't be available for Redhat, Debian, SUSE. What's your point here ? :) Unfortunately, that's the situation. The RPMs are bound to the distribution. Even worse, binary RPMs are actually bound to a given version of a distribution, because of dependencies, shared libraries the binaries have been linked against, etc... That's not going to change anytime soon, we have to live with it. The only level of compatibility we could achieve would be on the source packages, or rather the .spec files, but it requires packagers from every distribution to add their bits in there. We'll probably never have .spec files that work on any RPM-based distribution out-of-the-box. The only thing we can do is "single source", and put what's needed and what's different with every supported distribution. Been there, tried that, it's almost hopeless.
And I really think that the core distro should shrink a little (or at least stop growing) because at some point, quantity would get over quality, and that's definately not what any of us want. It's up to the openSUSE community to grow more packagers.
Stop growing, because people expect SUSE to be humongous. It is as if SUSE as a distro goes to eleven with the number of included packages.
Stop growing ? Are you kidding me ? In numbers of packagers, we're near 0, we *must* have more committed packagers in the community. Having around 30 dedicated people is a minimum. You're really expecting the dozen of people (at most) in the community actively making RPMs for SUSE Linux to keep on going like this forever ? Believe me, currently it's really not a motivating situation. At least it isn't for me. I definately want to reduce the number of packages I maintain, by a large margin. And being a good packager takes time, there's a lot of know-how behind it. If I stop packaging because I don't have the time for it any more, you loose 500 packages. If two other people at packman do the same, you'll loose another 500-1000 packages. What then ? This cannot be the situation to live with. With "growing packagers" I mean that those few people doing it now should pick up 2 or 3 really motivated volunteers and coach them, help, review their spec files, etc... That would be a good start. Or join Packman, where we already have a slightly larger team (around 7-8 active packagers) and especially where we have an infrastructure.
To me, that's the #1 priority for openSUSE (as a community), but I guess everyone sees other #1 priorities ;)) (and that's good, it not only shows there's still work to do to leverage our community (at least in numbers) but also that we actually have ideas on how to do that)
I really, really, really would love to see a lot of maintainers for one huge repo, which everybody (after some quilification) can link they YaST to, to get anything they like. That way it can already be added at instalation.
We already had some discussion about it, I'm sure you've seen the threads some 2-3 weeks ago.
Note that we almost have "one huge repo", and that's Packman.
I'll be merging my packages with them and join the crew, which will mean Packman will host about
80-90% of the SUSE RPMs made by the community. Which also means it pretty much becomes a single
point of failure.
Having it added at installation time isn't really necessary.
What would be badly needed is that YaST2 regularely pulls a list of community repositories from,
say, some location on opensuse.org and offers that as a checklist to the user, along with a
description of the repository, a list of available mirrors (we do have some for Packman), and a
disclaimer that Novell isn't liable for the packages in there, etc...
There's still an issue with the mp3 and mplayer stuff though. Given the laws in the US, Novell isn't
even allowed to point to such repositories. Those will always have to be added "manually".
[...]
cheers
- --
-o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/
/\\
Tuesday 11 Oct 2005 10:49 samaye Pascal Bleser alekhiit:
Stop growing, because people expect SUSE to be humongous. It is as if SUSE as a distro goes to eleven with the number of included packages.
Stop growing ? Are you kidding me ? In numbers of packagers, we're near 0,
I think Dazzle was just saying that the number of **packages** (not package**r**s) included in SUSE by default can be lesser. For example, I have downloaded 3.5 GB of SUSE 10 GM, but I have probably used only about 60% of it. I can't do an FTP install since I want to have a local copy of my files (I reinstalled SUSE 10 on my system *thrice* yesterday due to silly mistakes made by me) - so where does that leave us? The Fedora Core 4 DVD is 2 GB or so. Vector Linux is 2.3 GB or so. My SUSE 10 root partition contains only 2.1 GB of files. And I have unnecessarily spent download time, power consumption, server bandwidth etc etc for the remaining 1.4 GB! (Actually, that's more than 1.4 GB since the 2.1 GB of uncompressed files in my root partition would have come from - say what 1.5 GB of installer packages? So call it 2 GB.) SLICK is too small for me. GM is too large. Where do I go?
On 10/11/05, Shriramana Sharma
Tuesday 11 Oct 2005 10:49 samaye Pascal Bleser alekhiit:
Stop growing, because people expect SUSE to be humongous. It is as if SUSE as a distro goes to eleven with the number of included packages.
Stop growing ? Are you kidding me ? In numbers of packagers, we're near 0,
I think Dazzle was just saying that the number of **packages** (not
houghi was saying ;) -- Damian Mihai Liviu Phone: +40741226993 Yahoo: liviudm_cisco URL: http://liviudm.blogspot.com
On Tue, Oct 11, 2005 at 07:19:09AM +0200, Pascal Bleser wrote:
I agree. However in the past if you bought SUSE there was already so much in it that that starting to make your own was not really worth it, Perhaps
If I had thought that, there wouldn't be my repository today ;)
:-) I hope you understand I was talking in general. The fact that you and others did the rest took away the will to start one on your own.
RedHat rpm's (or other RPM's) just worked out of the box. Why would somebody start making an rpm package for each and every distro around.
Because that's just not true at all. Most Redhat/Fedora/Mandriva/whatever RPMs won't work on SUSE Linux, because each distribution has its own idiosyncrasies about where to install certain files (*), the names of the libraries (dependencies) (**), the available versions of libraries (dependencies) (***), how to configure and run daemons (****), etc...
The programs I tried worked. The more complex ones were in SUSE or on the existing repo's.
Yes. And ? That's the whole point of making RPMs for SUSE Linux. Same goes for the others: if you do a Debian package, it won't be available for Mandriva, Redhat, Fedora, SUSE. If you do a Mandriva package, it won't be available for Redhat, Debian, SUSE. What's your point here ? :)
That it would be much nicer if packages were interchangeble. Especialy when it comes to RPM based distro's.
That's not going to change anytime soon, we have to live with it.
I understand that, but it should also not be a thing were we say: Oh well, that is just the way it is. We should change it and look for something that works. Wether this is a change in RPM, a new packaging model or something completely different, I do not know. I am just not the person who sits down, shrugs and say: C'est la vie.
And I really think that the core distro should shrink a little (or at least stop growing) because at some point, quantity would get over quality, and that's definately not what any of us want. It's up to the openSUSE community to grow more packagers.
Stop growing, because people expect SUSE to be humongous. It is as if SUSE as a distro goes to eleven with the number of included packages.
Stop growing ? Are you kidding me ?
I was refering to : should shrink a little (or at least stop growing). From those two I would say: stop growing. In numbers of packagers, we're near 0, we *must* have more
With "growing packagers" I mean that those few people doing it now should pick up 2 or 3 really motivated volunteers and coach them, help, review their spec files, etc... That would be a good start.
Give me time. I first have to pick up some experience. See my posting in packager.
Or join Packman, where we already have a slightly larger team (around 7-8 active packagers) and especially where we have an infrastructure.
Step by step. First I must learn to walk.
We already had some discussion about it, I'm sure you've seen the threads some 2-3 weeks ago. Note that we almost have "one huge repo", and that's Packman.
I know. And due to the legal parts, it will not be really possible. Does not mean I realy, realy, realy want it. :-)
Having it added at installation time isn't really necessary.
Not necessary, convinient. Now I see a lot of people asking how to start using mp3, how to get other programs, where to download X, and all the answers are the same. Add an instalation source. If these were added during instalation, these questions would not arise. I understand that you are directly looking at the problems and objections that could arise. I am just saying what we should have as a goal and then look how far we can get. This does not have to be solved today. It is food for thought. At this moment I have 7 instalation sources: 1. my HD 2. /usr/src/packages/RPMS 3. inst-source 4. inst-source-java 5. GM-Extra 6. Packman 7. Guru Now what I would like as an end goal or as a target or thing to aim for is that 4-7 are one instalation source and that all of these are added by default. Possible? Not at this moment, although the first steps are being taken. 6 and 7 getting together. houghi -- Quote correct (NL) http://www.briachons.org/art/quote/ Zitiere richtig (DE) http://www.afaik.de/usenet/faq/zitieren Quote correctly (EN) http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html
Pascal Bleser wrote:
I really, really, really would love to see a lot of maintainers for one huge repo, which everybody (after some quilification) can link they YaST to, to get anything they like. That way it can already be added at instalation.
We already had some discussion about it, I'm sure you've seen the threads some 2-3 weeks ago. Note that we almost have "one huge repo", and that's Packman. [cut] Having it added at installation time isn't really necessary.
Being quite new to the SuSE bandwagon I'm going to ask (maybe) a stupid question. One, if not THE, thing I like about mandriva is: http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/ it's a web page where any one can go, select his distro-version, select geographically the mirror he likes, and the tipe of mirror he needs: A) Core distribution: - Source contrib : Some packages made by voluntaries or Mandriva, no support, no update for it. - Source main : The core of the Mandriva Linux distribution - Source updates : Official updates for Mandriva Linux, including security updates B) Other repository - Source jpackage : java stuff in here - Source plf-free : - Source plf-nonfree : Free to download and use, non-free as in licence having set that the average guy (like me) is sure to have the 95% of the distro existing rpms available. Now, given that we have to resolve the problem of the packman and/or suser-developer mirrors, this kind of approact is likely to be examinated ? Many thanks ! -- .~. Nicola -=KOOLINUS=- Losito /v\ http://www.koolinus.net // \\ /( )\ Linux Registered User #293182 ^^ ^^ icq:62837984 * Jabber-ID:koolinus@jabber.linux.it
On Tue, Oct 11, 2005 at 09:53:05AM +0200, Nicola -kOoLiNuS- Losito wrote:
One, if not THE, thing I like about mandriva is:
Extremely cool. Combine it with something like http://www.maxmind.com/geoip/api/c.shtml and a database and you have yourself a killer website. It could look what your country is and then look up what the best mirror might be for you and offer it as the first one. Naturaly you will still have a choice to choose another. Perhaps for countries that have more then one server, you could make a randomzier, so each time you get a new first choice. And for places where there is no information for one reason or another, you could point to a few of the main ones at random. That would be indeed a great way to get all the links to add as an instalation source as well as to get the correct place for download. Looking at the whois info, I think it is not directly linked to Mandriva. Perhaps someone interested in hosting such a thing could ask him to share the source and rewrite it for SUSE? houghi -- Quote correct (NL) http://www.briachons.org/art/quote/ Zitiere richtig (DE) http://www.afaik.de/usenet/faq/zitieren Quote correctly (EN) http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html
On Tue, Oct 11, 2005 at 10:35:19AM +0200, houghi wrote:
On Tue, Oct 11, 2005 at 09:53:05AM +0200, Nicola -kOoLiNuS- Losito wrote:
One, if not THE, thing I like about mandriva is:
Extremely cool. Combine it with something like http://www.maxmind.com/geoip/api/c.shtml and a database and you have yourself a killer website. It could look what your country is and then look up what the best mirror might be for you and offer it as the first one. Naturaly you will still have a choice to choose another.
What about: netselect https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=58742 https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=76706 rpms are in the apt repositori (suser-rbos). Just give netselect a bunch of hosts and the fastest one will be determined for you. -- Richard
On Tue, Oct 11, 2005 at 10:59:56AM +0200, radoeka wrote:
What about: netselect https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=58742 https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=76706
Access denied. You are not authorized to access bug #76706. Yes, I am logged in.
rpms are in the apt repositori (suser-rbos).
I don't use apt. Would be nice if suser-rbos did a `createrepo` on his stuff, so people can add it in YaST. So I looked it up, downloaded it and compiled it. Great program if you have all the facts on your PC and the program installed. The nice thing about a website looking at it is that anybody regardless of their OS can look it up.
Just give netselect a bunch of hosts and the fastest one will be determined for you.
Would be great to have included somehow in YaST and I asume that is what the bugs are about. houghi -- Quote correct (NL) http://www.briachons.org/art/quote/ Zitiere richtig (DE) http://www.afaik.de/usenet/faq/zitieren Quote correctly (EN) http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html
On Tue, Oct 11, 2005 at 11:25:01AM +0200, houghi wrote:
Would be great to have included somehow in YaST and I asume that is what the bugs are about.
OK. for those who have netselect installed. I made the file with host: http://www.houghi.org/script/mirrors.txt Just run `netselect -s 3 $(mirrors.txt)` to see the three fastest mirrors. This is far from perfect, as it gets a lot of servers that give 9999 ms and they are still accesible. It makes me rething wether or not I will keep using belnet.be, as there are ones that are faster. houghi -- Quote correct (NL) http://www.briachons.org/art/quote/ Zitiere richtig (DE) http://www.afaik.de/usenet/faq/zitieren Quote correctly (EN) http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html
Hello, Am Dienstag, 11. Oktober 2005 11:25 schrieb houghi:
On Tue, Oct 11, 2005 at 10:59:56AM +0200, radoeka wrote:
What about: netselect https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=58742 https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=76706
Access denied. You are not authorized to access bug #76706. Yes, I am logged in.
#58742 should be accessable now ;-) I also asked SUSE to open #76706. Regards, Christian Boltz -- Gna, schon wieder Seti [...] Dabei ist es schon schwierig genug, auf *diesem* Planeten intelligentes Leben zu finden. [Charly Kuehnast]
On Wed, Oct 12, 2005 at 01:10:13AM +0200, Christian Boltz wrote:
Hello,
Am Dienstag, 11. Oktober 2005 11:25 schrieb houghi:
On Tue, Oct 11, 2005 at 10:59:56AM +0200, radoeka wrote:
What about: netselect https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=58742 https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=76706
Access denied. You are not authorized to access bug #76706. Yes, I am logged in.
#58742 should be accessable now ;-)
Thanks. Questions. When does one open a bug to add things and one do you use http://www.opensuse.org/Wishlists I have another one and will start a new thread for that. houghi -- Quote correct (NL) http://www.briachons.org/art/quote/ Zitiere richtig (DE) http://www.afaik.de/usenet/faq/zitieren Quote correctly (EN) http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html
Hello, Am Mittwoch, 12. Oktober 2005 02:54 schrieb houghi: [...]
Thanks. Questions. When does one open a bug to add things and one do you use http://www.opensuse.org/Wishlists
In short: - if a package is outdated (means: new version available since long time), this is clearly something for bugzilla - if you have an enhancement request to an existing package, it could also go into bugzilla (severity: Enhancement). This could be discussed on "large" enhancements like including a new (external) Apache module which could also go to the wiki. - if you want a package included that was never in SUSE before, the package wishlist in the wiki is the way to go. Regards, Christian Boltz -- Who is General Failure and why is he reading my disk?
houghi wrote:
Looking at the whois info, I think it is not directly linked to Mandriva.
Exactly ...
Perhaps someone interested in hosting such a thing could ask him to share the source and rewrite it for SUSE?
if i'm not mistaken here you can see the code: http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/urpmi.setup.html cheers ! -- .~. Nicola -=KOOLINUS=- Losito /v\ http://www.koolinus.net // \\ /( )\ Linux Registered User #293182 ^^ ^^ icq:62837984 * Jabber-ID:koolinus@jabber.linux.it
On Tue, Oct 11, 2005 at 11:07:59AM +0200, Nicola -kOoLiNuS- Losito wrote:
Perhaps someone interested in hosting such a thing could ask him to share the source and rewrite it for SUSE?
if i'm not mistaken here you can see the code: http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/urpmi.setup.html
Way over my head. houghi -- Quote correct (NL) http://www.briachons.org/art/quote/ Zitiere richtig (DE) http://www.afaik.de/usenet/faq/zitieren Quote correctly (EN) http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html
Hello,
On 10/10/05, Pascal Bleser
activities. Maybe it's time for some "pass the torch" thing ;)
Pass it to me ;)
I really think that the most of us (as mentioned above) are very good packagers with a lot of experience with SUSE Linux - we've been doing this for quite some time - and we should try to find some volunteers interested in the job and grow a packager community. At least I'm willing to help, review, coach, whatever, as I'm sure others are. I believe that we can get some SUSE staffers to give us a hand as well.
I am not a packager (yet) but I want to help. Unfortunately I know only the basics about creating RPM packages but if you can provide me some sample spec files and give me some time to read something about creating RPMs I can help you with some packages. I also need some space where to host them, I have only 256kbps connection. Yours faithfully, -- Damian Mihai Liviu Phone: +40741226993 Yahoo: liviudm_cisco URL: http://liviudm.blogspot.com
participants (7)
-
Christian Boltz -
Dazzle -
houghi -
Nicola -kOoLiNuS- Losito -
Pascal Bleser -
radoeka -
Shriramana Sharma