Package distribution hassles - a proposal.

[John H Terpstra]

Jerry,

Max's raising of this subject is timely. As you know, I have been wanting
to revamp the packaging area for some time. It makes sense to do this
before 3.0 goes live.

I would like to produce a single RPM SPEC file and would like to create a
single packaging subsystem for all platforms.

I wonder if we should address a wider issue though. There is a steady
increase in the number of direct requests / emails we get each day from
folks who have problems with or obtaining binary forms of samba. A few
weeks back I received about 30 direct requests in one day. I would be
surprised if others of the team are not also receiving these. Most are
requests for binaries not on our FTP site and for help with trying to
install on Red Hat Linux.

My time is very tight lately so I have not chased down or produced as many
binary packages as in the past. I would like a measure of just how
important the availability of Samba binary packages is to our success.
If we all agree that this is a very important service then maybe we should
look at a mechanism for making this happen more forcefully.

Just my $0.01 worth.

- John T.

On Wed, 27 Feb 2002, Gerald Carter wrote:

> For background, Max and I have talked about this off list some.
> Since I am not really maintaining the SPEC files for the various
> linux distributions, I thought it would be better for him
> to post here where Tridge, Jeremy, and John T. could discuss
> it.
>
> cheers, jerry
>
> On Wed, 27 Feb 2002, Max TenEyck Woodbury wrote:
>
> > Max TenEyck Woodbury wrote:
> > > Gerald Carter wrote:
> > >> ...
> > >>
> > >> But again, you should be contacting John, Tridge, & Jeremy about this
> > >> if you want to follow through.
> > >
> > > OK. I'll need an intro to get their attention. Do you mind if I forward
> > > this to them?
> > >
> > >> ....
> > >>>
> > >>> I'd like to help some. I don't have the resources to take the whole
> > >>> job on, but I might just be able to make a useful contribution.
> > >>
> > >> I really encourage you to talk to the maintainers of this.
> > >> They have reasons for the design that I'm sure they can articulate
> > >> much better than I.
> > >>
> > >> Anyways....I'm fairly bogged down right now so I'll drop off.
> > >> Before you start working on this, make sure you get Tridge & John
> > >> to sign on to the idea.  Jeremy as well of course.  I don't really
> > >> care on way or the other.
> > >>
> > >> ...
> > >
> > >> jerry
> > > mtew at cds.duke.edu
> >
> > I'd like to start by collecting a list of all the published
> > distributions with their salient characteristics. That will take a
> > bit of work to build. Once I have a preliminary list, I'll post it
> > to this list (samba-technical) for review. After that I think it would
> > be appropriate to turn it into a page on the samba.org web site. Also,
> > a contact point should be established for publishers who want updates
> > to the page. I'd be one of those contacts and do the page updates, but
> > there should be an official record as well.
> >
> > With that base-line information, it should be quite a bit easier to
> > build a distribution that interacts well with the stock distribution.
> >
> > mtew at cds.duke.edu
> >
> >
>
>

-- 
John H Terpstra
Email: jht at samba.org

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