Outdated packaging in packaging/Debian

[Jelmer Vernooij]

On Sat, Jun 13, 2009 at 05:29:27AM -0500, Andrew Kroeger wrote:
> Timur I. Bakeyev wrote:
>> On Fri, Jun 12, 2009 at 01:29:31PM +0200, Bj?rn Jacke wrote:
>>> On 2009-06-12 at 01:33 +0200 Jelmer Vernooij sent off:
>>>> Would anybody object to removing the contents of this directory and
>>>> instead putting in a README file that points to the svn.debian.org and
>>>> the SerNet Debian packages? 

> Yes - see below.

>>> I'd actually also like to propose remove the packaging files for Red Hat and
>>> replace them with a README pointing to distributors' packages. 

> No - see below...


>> I'd go farther and remove all the packaging staff and replace it with one
>> README, pointing, where appropriate packages for different systems can be
>> found. Like in FreeBSD ports collection :)

>> Cheers,
>> Timur.

> Please do not take this the wrong way, but Samba is far too dynamic to  
> allow downstream sources to be the ultimate authority WRT packaging.  I  
> *do* believe the downstream distributions possess their own right to  
> apply patches against the official release tarballs WRT their needs as  
> far as init scripts, configuration options, local (not accepted  
> upstream) patches, FHS (or non-FHS) compliance, etc.

> I currently run my development system on a Fedora 9 (x86_64) system that  
> is maintained with all current updates.  A recent change to the  
> LIBNETAPI torture tests required me to upgrade my RPM-based installation  
> to the latest (custom RPM build) Samba release in order to provide the  
> current libnetapi.so DSO.

> If the goal is to prevent Samba team members from being responsible for  
> the Samba packaging for a given named distribution, please provide links  
> within the proposed README to the Samba wiki so that packaging  
> contributions can be made by all.

> Allowing downstream packagers to build their own distributions of Samba  
> packages is the nature of the FOSS community.  However, not providing  
> packaging resources to those who wish to "roll their own" packages from  
> any given Samba snapshot seems to me to be telling those who are  
> following Samba development that they're on their own - not that there's  
> a community behind them.
The package sources (at least for Debian) in Samba's git tree have been 
broken for the last three years and nobody has complained about that fact 
or provided fixes.  To me, that's an indication nobody is using them. The 
distributions do ship working packages of the latest versions of Samba. 

> P.S. - I recently attempted to generate and build a Fedora 9 NTP RPM  
> package based off of the current (Fedora rawhide) NTP source RPM, to  
> provide the signed NTP responses required by MS ADS domain client  
> machines.  I gave up on my efforts because the delta of the number of  
> local (Fedora RPM) patches against the stable NTP branch vs. the most  
> recent NTP development tarball was too large.
There are two sorts of patches that distributions ship:

 * Patches to make the upstream sources fit in better with the overall 
   system. We would need these sort of patches in Samba-provided
   packaging as well
 * Cherry-picked fixes or other "generic" upstream changes. If a
   distribution is carrying a lot of these and not forwarding them 
   upstream, I would argue there's an issue in the relationship 
   between upstream and the distribution.

I would rather work together with the distributions to make sure the
packages they provide do the right thing than have separate packages
that, which are most likely going to end up outdated.

Cheers,

Jelmer

-- 
Jelmer Vernooij <jelmer at samba.org> - http://samba.org/~jelmer/