Uoti Urpala <uoti.urp...@pp1.inet.fi> writes: > I think the divergence has gone too far in things like non-Linux ports. > They have had an overall negative effect on people working on Linux > within Debian and people creating derivatives.
I have to take exception to this. There has been a great deal of *concern* from people over the past two years that the non-Linux ports *might* have a negative effect on Linux in the context of this particular discussion. But, in the meantime, the non-Linux porters have been first-class Debian contributors over the years. They have not substantially gotten in the way of Debian's processes, certainly no more than any Linux port to a more obscure architecture, and they have contributed a great many improvements to our software. For example, I think special thanks should go to the Hurd porters for extended, thankless work on removing static buffers from the code in the archive. They were doing so because some of the constants used to size those buffers are not portable to the Hurd, but using static buffers to store paths and related strings is often incorrect regardless of its portability, and can even be a security issue depending on how the code is written. The Hurd porters have provided reasonable patches that can go back to upstream and result in objectively more robust software. I have gotten a steady stream of solid and thoughtful patches from the Hurd porters for years as a Debian package maintainer, and I appreciate that work. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/> -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
