[Samba] linux-schools samba ubuntu packages: it is just awful

Michael Tokarev mjt at tls.msk.ru
Tue Nov 15 11:01:50 UTC 2022


Hi!

After several people (here and elsewhere) asked me about
linux-schools ubuntu ppa with samba packages, I took a
look at the thing.  And was rather shocked.

Basically, what they did was took the debian package of
samba-4.15 (the one before the changes in samba which
leads to quite significant changes in packaging), and
REMOVED WHOLE PACKAGING from there.

The end result is that they have single new package
named "samba4" with *everything* samba, and a lot of
dummy empty packages for all subpackages which were
in debian/ubuntu (client, winbind, pam, etc).

I'd say it is a package vandalism, so to say, it is
a very hackish way to do things, it is ruining a
distribution.  Why? Because other packages depend
on, say, libsmbclient, - vlc, nautilus, whatever,
but now libsmbclient is just an empty package which
actually provides nothing. You install it instead
of the real libsmbclient, and the packages which
used libsmbclient.so just stop working with error
"unable to load libsmbclient.so".  The result is
a Big Mess (tm).

It is more: after installing this mess, it is quite
difficult to roll it back into a normal system...

I'm not compelling with them, there's no single reason
for me to do that - I mean, I'm writing this as someone
who published real samba "ppa" on our site recently. I
don't need to fight competitors - I gain nothing at all
by publishing my repo or by doing debian packaging in
the first place.

But I do want to warn ubuntu users strongly against using this
schools samba ppa.  It is just an awful way to packaging.
There's no reason to believe me, - just go take a look
at their packages.

*SIGH*.

Thanks,

/mjt



More information about the samba mailing list