digitalmars.D - Re: DMD in Gentoo
- Anant Narayanan <anant gentoo.org> May 22 2007
- Brad Roberts <braddr puremagic.com> May 22 2007
- Lars Ivar Igesund <larsivar igesund.net> May 23 2007
- Anant Narayanan <anant gentoo.org> May 26 2007
Brad Roberts wrote:Great. The announcement that it's for a specific version is what tweaked my concern as it's a key aspect of why Walter doesn't allow redistribution. He wants users to always get the latest release, not have old releases living in the wild. Does this package seek to always get the most recent version or is it hard coded at those versions?
Unfortunately, our QA policy does not allow such fetching (since the latest version may be broken, which is inconvenient for our users). Any new releases require a new ebuild to be written which guarantees that it works - the build system is not always the same across releases. However, Gentoo is one of the distributions known for its '0-day releases', as updates to the tree happen very frequently. There shouldn't be a gap of more than 7 days between a new upstream release and a downstream ebuild. Best Regards, -- Anant Narayanan http://www.kix.in/ gpg --recv-keys 0EF6914E <anant kix.in,gentoo.org,php.net>
May 22 2007
Anant Narayanan wrote:Brad Roberts wrote:Great. The announcement that it's for a specific version is what tweaked my concern as it's a key aspect of why Walter doesn't allow redistribution. He wants users to always get the latest release, not have old releases living in the wild. Does this package seek to always get the most recent version or is it hard coded at those versions?
Unfortunately, our QA policy does not allow such fetching (since the latest version may be broken, which is inconvenient for our users). Any new releases require a new ebuild to be written which guarantees that it works - the build system is not always the same across releases. However, Gentoo is one of the distributions known for its '0-day releases', as updates to the tree happen very frequently. There shouldn't be a gap of more than 7 days between a new upstream release and a downstream ebuild. Best Regards, -- Anant Narayanan http://www.kix.in/ gpg --recv-keys 0EF6914E <anant kix.in,gentoo.org,php.net>
While I really don't want to play Walter's parrot on this issue since I'm not sure I agree with it, but by having a fixed version downloader, the spirit of the problem is the same. You're providing a package that must be separately maintained or users will get an outdated version. That it _can_ be kept up to date is no guarantee that it will, or will be on a timely basis. Additionally, who is this 'our' that you refer to? Are you speaking on behalf of Gentoo, some other company, the D community? The attribution is unclear. At this point, I'm going to step out of the debate and if Walter chooses to enforce his redistribution policy that's his call. Later, Brad
May 22 2007
Brad Roberts wrote:Anant Narayanan wrote:Brad Roberts wrote:Great. The announcement that it's for a specific version is what tweaked my concern as it's a key aspect of why Walter doesn't allow redistribution. He wants users to always get the latest release, not have old releases living in the wild. Does this package seek to always get the most recent version or is it hard coded at those versions?
Unfortunately, our QA policy does not allow such fetching (since the latest version may be broken, which is inconvenient for our users). Any new releases require a new ebuild to be written which guarantees that it works - the build system is not always the same across releases. However, Gentoo is one of the distributions known for its '0-day releases', as updates to the tree happen very frequently. There shouldn't be a gap of more than 7 days between a new upstream release and a downstream ebuild. Best Regards, -- Anant Narayanan http://www.kix.in/ gpg --recv-keys 0EF6914E <anant kix.in,gentoo.org,php.net>
While I really don't want to play Walter's parrot on this issue since I'm not sure I agree with it, but by having a fixed version downloader, the spirit of the problem is the same. You're providing a package that must be separately maintained or users will get an outdated version. That it _can_ be kept up to date is no guarantee that it will, or will be on a timely basis. Additionally, who is this 'our' that you refer to? Are you speaking on behalf of Gentoo, some other company, the D community? The attribution is unclear. At this point, I'm going to step out of the debate and if Walter chooses to enforce his redistribution policy that's his call. Later, Brad
I'm pretty sure 'our' refer to Gentoo, and I find it a sane requirement given that it has happened more than one time that DMD has been unusable for a wide range of programs. Talking on behalf of Tango, we do also recommend particular versions of DMD (and make these available for download through our agreement with DigitalMars). These are usually the latest DMD for our snapshot builds, but given that each revision usually requires a merge into the Tango runtime, an update of dmd.bin via Gentoo's portage would quite possibly break Tango if coming in the interim. -- Lars Ivar Igesund blog at http://larsivi.net DSource, #d.tango & #D: larsivi Dancing the Tango
May 23 2007
Anant Narayanan <anant gentoo.org> Lars Ivar Igesund Wrote:Brad Roberts wrote:Additionally, who is this 'our' that you refer to? Are you speaking on behalf of Gentoo, some other company, the D community? The attribution is unclear.
given that it has happened more than one time that DMD has been unusable for a wide range of programs.
Lars is right, I speak on behalf of Gentoo. I will get in touch with Walter off-list to clarify his position on this. We've had such problems with ebuilds for software such as winex and cedega before - and it's usually best to work out a solution upfront :) Thanks. -- Anant Narayanan http://www.kix.in/ gpg --recv-keys 0EF6914E <anant kix.in,gentoo.org,php.net>
May 26 2007