Re: Fwd: Re: Why no Opera?
Hi debian-devel, > The web of trust gave me Mr Johan Herland as the only member of strong set > and I took the freedom to place him on the CC line. Johan forwarded you to me. For reference, dpkg -s, or the package's control file, would have told you: Maintainer: Opera Packaging Team <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Opera could offer an apt repository for the .deb We already do :-) Here's the line from my /etc/apt/sources.list: deb http://deb.opera.com/opera/ testing non-free There are two packages available (for each of several configurations): opera is the shared-linkage version, opera-static is the statically-linked version. The former comes in two flavours; .5 for sarge and .6 for etch onwards. Things older than sarge are the reason for the static version. With any luck, Claudio (one of the other parties to [EMAIL PROTECTED]) can add more detail on what's behind that ... > On Tuesday 28 August 2007 06:46:47 Bruce Sass wrote: >> On Mon August 27 2007 05:33:05 pm Romain Beauxis wrote: >> > Le Tuesday 28 August 2007 00:17:40 Bruce Sass, vous avez écrit : >> > > On Mon August 27 2007 04:05:24 pm Pierre Habouzit wrote: >> > > > And it's no way we will accept the statically linked version >> > > > in Debian. >> Of course, obviously---for software where there is a choice, but for >> software which can not be built from source because it is closed or not >> redistributable once modified (which seems to be the case with Opera), >> putting a statically linked version into the archive sounds like the >> correct solution. I'm confused. Pierre appears to be saying "static is bad", Bruce "closed must be static". We have both static and shared packages, so you can take your pick, but which is the one the official Debian repository wants ? I should also note that the existing Opera packages have not been very lintian-compliant. The new 9.50 release (we recently released an alpha) shall deploy my re-write of the scripts that do packaging: this fixes many of the deficiencies you'll find in packages up to 9.23, but I'd greatly appreciate guidance on how to improve what 9.50 does ! Thanks for mirroring our package, Eddy. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Fwd: Re: Why no Opera?
Steffen: >> So, the Debian community would have someone (and sadly only one) who can >> inspect your source and fix issues that arise. The benefit I see for Opera >> is >> a further decreased footprint. Bernd: > if opera would be come open-source, I'd be willing to co-maintain and > check packages - it would be worth the work. But I'm not willing to > spend my free time on closed source if there's no really good reason to > do so. I'm afraid this humble coder isn't about to sway that argument; for the present, Opera remains closed, all I can do is make life easier for users. I entirely appreciate that I can't expect help improving our closed packages, but any help that *is* volunteered would make one more package be a bit closer to conforming to Debian's standards. We've had some very welcome help from the Ubuntu folks, who are largely responsible for the improvements between 9.23 and 9.50, and I'll be reviewing the remaining issues (two of my nine outstanding packaging bugs are Debian-specific) when I have time. Steffen: > For a closed source release it would be lovely if you had a Debian > developer amongst your Opera developers who can upload packages to > the distribution. That's one of the (too many) things I've got on my todo list - get myself trained as a proper Debian developer. For the moment, I just have some scripts (mostly inherited, I've only had time to clean them up so far) that do the packaging mostly right; the scripts know more about Debian packaging than I do, though. Tollef Fog Heen directed me to http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/maint-guide/ when he was my Ubuntu contact, so I guess I should familiarize myself with that before asking for a sponsor ! Eddy. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Fwd: Re: Why no Opera?
> you can at least use linda and lintian (-iI) to check your packages, > that should help a lot. Indeed - I've been using lintian, and linda's on my set of things to try during my next binge of package work. Eddy. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Fwd: Re: Why no Opera?
Lionel: >> (Explicitly CCing Edward in the assumption he's not subscribed to this >> list. Thank you - I am, indeed, not subscribed. It would actually be best if you could address me as [EMAIL PROTECTED], so that various of my colleagues see the discussion, too. >> ... The message I'm answering to is at >> http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2007/09/msg00145.html . I'd like >> to be CCed an followups, although subscribed.) Thanks for the link - and I largely agree with much that's said in that - see below. Roberto: >> > Static linking is considered bad because it is a security >> > nightmare. You now have extra copies of library code floating >> > around. Dynamic linking is what the security team likes since it >> > means that you only update the code once for the whole system. ... >> > Additionally, static linking destroys any memory utilization benefit of >> > library code. (...) Agreed. These are roughly the arguments I've used in the past to avoid pressure to "simplify" our packaging by changing to static linking (which would save us having to address issues of compatibility with diverse versions of GNU/Linux). The cost is that we have to keep ourselves up-to-date with existing systems, which increases the number of distinct builds we have to make (and package and ship). We have the opera-static version (which static-links Qt, but dynamic-links everything else) so that we can support those on very old versions of GNU/Linux; and I don't like the security (or footprint) angle on that, but it's the best we can think of to do for folk who don't upgrade their core systems. >> > However, in the event that there is an update which makes the >> > library non-binary compatible, then there is another problem. That >> > is, apps linking against it must be recompiled. With a non-free >> > product like opera, there would be [no] ability for some well-meaning >> > Debian Developer to NMU the package (since there is no source) or >> > for a binNMU to take place if that could fix the problem. I'm not sure what a binNMU is. As for the NMU problem, for the foreseeable future, I have to live with opera being non-free, which means we have to carry the burden of responding in a timely manner to such ABI-incompatible changes. Naturally, [EMAIL PROTECTED] would be grateful for any notification of such problems, when they arise. >> > One possible solution would be for Opera to produce a "source" >> > package of unlinked binary object files. This would allow relinking >> > against new versions of the libraries (at least in most cases) >> > without the need for access to the source. >> This is already legally required anyway, assuming you link with LGPL >> code: section 6 of LGPL 2.1. LGPL 2.1 Section 6.b allows for us to b) Use a suitable shared library mechanism for linking with the Library. A suitable mechanism is one that (1) uses at run time a copy of the library already present on the user's computer system, rather than copying library functions into the executable, and (2) will operate properly with a modified version of the library, if the user installs one, as long as the modified version is interface-compatible with the version that the work was made with. and we use shared linkage for the most part. Even the opera-static package only statically links Qt (for which we have a separate license from TrollTech, independent of its availability under GPL or QPL); everything else is shared-linked. So my understanding of the legal angle is that providing unlinked binaries isn't required - please explain why, if you disagree. >> ... Putting it in a Debian "source package" >> would only put it in a most convenient form for your users. Using shared linkage gets the end-user as much ability to replace libraries (including the X libraries, under BSDoid licenses) as supplying the linkable binaries - if the ABI changes, they'd need a new linkable component from us in any case, and otherwise their replacement shared library will still work. If I've missed something crucial, please enlighten me ! Roberto again: > Right. My point was that distributing it in such a fashion might > address some of the concerns (though not all, of course) about having > something like Opera even in non-free. It would help me if you could enumerate those concerns. Eddy. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Fwd: Re: Why no Opera?
> Can we still hope that there are requests from the Opera developers that a > certain set of LGPL libraries are out there that should be distributed with > Debian (which they are currently not or in a "wrong" version or missing > patches) that would help to further reduce the footprint of the > non-inspectable closed-source bits of the Opera Debian package? Since we dynamic link everything - except for the Qt in our opera-static package - we simply use the dependency mechanisms in the Debian package system to ensure the presence of the libraries on which we depend, all of which are present in standard debian packages already. So I don't think there's anything that fits your description above. Again, if you believe otherwise, I'd be interested to know. > Or are there free tools you are developing with that should be part > of Debian? Again, all the tools we use in development are present in Debian already. In fact, in practice, the Unix team would not think of using any tool *not* in Debian, simply because most of us use Debian boxes as our main work-stations ;^) Eddy. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Fwd: Re: Why no Opera?
> One thing which would help is if you made use of the Bugs: filed in > debian/control. That is you do something like this: > Bugs: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ah ! OK, thanks for that ... packaging script revised :-) > This allows people to send bug reports to you directly using the > reportbug tool, I'd sort of assumed Maintainer was used for that ! Eddy. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Fwd: Re: Why no Opera?
> I am not seeking for a violation of some license. I didn't think you were. > It is "missed opportunities" for optimisation that I am after. That's what I understood you to mean. > You have the source, you seek for them :o) I really don't think there's anything that fits the bill. > Please consider to maintain and/or co-maintain some free packages > for the distribution and become a DD. I have asked my boss whether we can treat the time I'd need for this as my training budget allocation; I'll see how that goes ;-) And thank you for the offer to be sponsor - I'll have a look at the work-needing page to see if I find something that appeals, Eddy. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
