[Beowulf] A press release

[Jon Aquilina]

one thing must not be forgotten though. in regards to pkging stuff for the
ubuntu variation once someone like you and me you upload it for someone
higher up on the chain to check and upload to the servers. so basically
someone is checking what someone else has packaged.

On 7/2/08, Tim Cutts <tjrc at sanger.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>
> On 2 Jul 2008, at 6:06 am, Mark Hahn wrote:
>
>  I was hoping for some discussion of concrete issues.  for instance,
>>>> I have the impression debian uses something other than sysvinit -
>>>> does that work out well?
>>>>
>>>> Debian uses standard sysvinit-style scripts in /etc/init.d, /etc/rc0.d,
>>> ...
>>>
>>
>> thanks.  I guess I was assuming that mainstream debian was like ubuntu.
>>
>
> It's sort of the other way around.  Remember that Ubuntu is based off a
> six-monthly snapshot of Debian's testing track, which is why Hardy looks a
> lot more like the upcoming Debian Lenny than it does like Debian Etch.
>
> interesting - I wonder why.  the main difference would be that the rpm
>> format encodes dependencies...
>>
>
> The difficulty is that many ISVs tend to do a fairly terrible job of
> packaging their applications as RPM's or DEB's, for example creating init
> scripts which don't obey the distribution's policies, or making willy-nilly
> modifications to configuration files all over the place, even in other
> packages (which in the Debian world is a *big* no-no, that's why many
> Debian/Ubuntu packages have now moved to the conf.d type of configuration
> directory, so that other packages can drop in little independent snippets of
> configuration)
>
> I have seen, for example, .deb packages from a Large Company With Which We
> Are All Familiar which essentially attempted to convert your system into a
> Red Hat system by moving all your init scripts around and whatnot, so once
> you'd installed this abomination, you'd totally wrecked the ability of many
> of the main distro packages to be updated ever again.  Oh, and of course
> uninstalling the package didn't put anything back the way it had been
> before.
>
> Like you, I tend to use tarballs if they are available, and if I want to
> turn them into packages I do it myself, and make sure they are policy
> compliant for the distro.
>
> So this, while not a statement in favour of either flavour of distro, is
> definitely a warning to be very wary of what packages that have come from
> sources other than the distro itself might do (which of course, you'd be
> wary of anyway for security reasons).
>
> Tim
>
>
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-- 
Jonathan Aquilina
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