Hi Manuel, Thanks for your bug report and thanks for your thoughts. However, at this point I'm inclined to respectfully disagree with you on this subject.
On 2/8/20 8:44 AM, Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo wrote: > Package: ember > Version: 0.8.0~snap1 > Severity: serious > > Hello, > > I don't think taht using this package as an empty shell and a gateway to > install > the "snap" package [1] is a valid use of the packaging system. Not only is this use listed in Policy [1] under the contrib section (where I'm moving the two packages I've done this with, pending NEW) but a number of other packages (in contrib) do exactly the same thing. Flash [2] being the obvious example. I'd also like to point out that I asked about this course of action back in December [3] and no one raised any concerns. So it's a little frustrating that after I've done all the work to convert the packages I'm now getting feedback saying I shouldn't have done it. > Otherwise, if this was an accepted practice, we could start to have many > packages which are just a way to install snap packages, which can easily > contain > security vulnerabilities and install not free software, specially if the > version > is not restricted in some way. And this not generally expected by users of > Debian, IMO. This is a fair concern. However, I think that users *do* expect this of packages in contrib. Pabs made a good argument in a different bug report about this issue and convinced me. I'm going with that. However, I do agree that this shouldn't be *normal*. Ideally, we should host source code and build the packages ourselves, in main. In this case, I see this as a gap-filler while the upstream packages go through a period of extreme instability. Upstream is very small and this process is likely to last more than a year. I structured the transitional packages, and annotated a comment in d/copyright, explaining that this is a temporary step to have a usable package (for Debian users who opt in to contrib) until upstream stabilizes and I can package it in main again. > If users want to install Snap packages, they can always do so on their own. They can. I'm just trying to provide a transition path that will eventually lead to the main packaging of the updated upstream software. > So please reconsider and either package the game properly or drop this package > altogether. FWIW, I am planning to temporarily drop the supporting Worldforge libraries [1] since they will just be taking up space in the archive and they'll get pulled back in to a user's system once Ember and Cyphesis return to main. Again, I want to clarify that I am open to inputs (and I appreciate yours) and I'm happy to continue the discussion if you have additional points that you think I should consider. But I really wish that these concerns had been brought up back in December... > [1] https://salsa.debian.org/games-team/ember/blob/master/debian/ember.preinst -Olek [1] https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-archive.html#the-contrib-archive-area [2] https://packages.debian.org/sid/flashplugin-nonfree [3] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-games/2019/12/msg00000.html
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