Re: On linux kernel packaging issue

[Eike Sauer]

Nikita V. Youshchenko schrieb:
> Seems that someone without any sort of complete knowledge of the problem,
> decided to maintain one of the most important parts of the system. And the
> way he chooses is "removing everything that I don't undestand". This looks
> like a disaster.

If I didn't get it awfully wrong, nobody is going to take anything away.
He just wanted to ADD a way you can get a new kernel without TAKING AWAY
the old way.

Correct me if I'm wrong.
Eike

possible compromise for ITP: linux?

[Eike Sauer]

Hello!

The discussion doesn't seem to be very productive any more.
Time to come to a compromise?

Obviously, Robert is not going to retreat.
He has put much time in posting already and hopefully will 
spend much more time in making a good package (if this is 
possible). So let him build his package.

OTOH, most people (publicly) stating anything about his ITP
had objections against the package as a whole or the name 
or missing features or other things.

What about letting Robert build and upload (if ftp-masters agree)
his package, *if* he puts it in experimental, uses a description
that contains a warning about the experimental status of the
package in a prominent place, and not calling it "linux", but... 
(Robert, please choose. linux-tng, linux-experimental and other 
names have been proposed). If all works out fine and such packages 
eventually become the standard way of installing the linux kernel, 
the name could be changed then (as well as distrubution and description).
If it's not working, an important package name stays usable.

All who object on such packaging could help improve the package
- or show that it's not feasible - by testing it and filing 
(serious, fair) bug reports.

Just my 2 Euro cents,
Eike

-- 
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected 
us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, 
munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music."
Kristian Wilson, Nintendo, Inc, 1989

Re: possible compromise for ITP: linux?

[Eike Sauer]

Andrew Suffield schrieb:
> He doesn't need to, he can be slapped down.

"Keine Gewalt!" ("No violence!")

> We don't ignore minor issues just because there are major ones.

So let's hope Robert can cope with minor issues 
and only talk about the big ones for now.

>  - this packages adds nothing, and would occupy a fair chunk of space
>in the archive. 

I don't know how short Debian is of space.
How large would Robert's packages be?
There already are several packages with complete 
kernel sources which take as much place as his package 
would, right?
So is this really too large to let him test his idea?

>  - this package cannot be safely upgraded (without forcing a reboot).
> The latter prohibits it from being in a Debian release. 

So it doesn't stop it from entering experimental.
But I'm not sure if a package is worth a try if
it cannot possibly make it in a release.

Ciao,
Eike

Re: possible compromise for ITP: linux?

[Eike Sauer]

Andreas Metzler schrieb:
> Eike Sauer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> There already are several packages with complete
>> kernel sources which take as much place as his package
>> would, right?
> Robert does not propose to remove the existing kernel-source packages

Even he was a bit vague about that (sometimes I understood 
the large number of kernel packages used as an argument 
for his idea, which seemed to imply that he wants to remove
many of them), I understood that. I wanted to say that the
size of his packages are not too large to be included if 
we find they do something useful. 

> therefore the calculation is simple - more than 100MB required space

He didn't want to support all architectures, 
so let's say 50 to 100 MB.

> in exchange for ...?

That goes to Robert. 
A cleaner design comes to my mind, which is not much 
for 50-100 MB being reproduced.

Ciao,
Eike

Re: Bug#219582: ITP: linux -- Linux 2.4 kernel

[Eike Sauer]

Robert Millan schrieb:
> I don't see why. I have a bunch of resources to find a solution for this
> trivial bug.

You are implying the other DDs are your ressource for finding
what you are calling "trivial bugs". They are not. It's your
duty to think of most of it beforehand.

If you didn't want to imply that: Which ressources do you have?
Why did you not already use them?

> I'm not suitable because my package has a trivial bug? Sorry, but you're
> not entitled to put my skills in question.

Straight question, straight answer: 
Did you think about system.map at all?

> Is getting wchan displayable a reason to solve the System.map issue? If it
> is, I'll solve it. But I haven't seen anyone explaining what is wchan
> useful for at all. 

It's not our duty to explain why we want feature A or B.
If your are going to provide a new style of packaging something,
it's your duty do do it at least as well as the old style
and to preserve ALL features, no matter how useful you
find them personally.

> My amount of thought and consideration will apply when I get bug reports
> through the BTS. 

That's too late for thoughts.

You are telling us: 
I'll throw this package in Debian,
I don't care about features I don't use,
if anybody does, he should file a bug report.

That's not what I'd call thorough working.

> Which brings back the question on wether you're looking for bugs on
> purpose just for the sake of trolling.

YOU are the one who should look for bugs (on purpose!) before.

All those people do this to help you seeing the difficulties
in your project. It's meant to help you.

Ciao,
Eike

-- 
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected 
us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, 
munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music."
Kristian Wilson, Nintendo, Inc, 1989

Re: Bug#219582: ITP: linux -- Linux 2.4 kernel

[Eike Sauer]

Robert Millan schrieb:
> On Tue, Nov 11, 2003 at 02:17:10PM +0100, Eike Sauer wrote:
>> Robert Millan schrieb:
>> > I don't see why. I have a bunch of resources to find a solution for
>> > this trivial bug.
[...]
> I didn't want to imply that. I was referring to general packaging
> resources like preinst script, debconf, etc.

These are not ressources to *find* bugs AFAIK.
It still seems to me you are not very concerned about
squashing bugs and/or preserving features *before* releasing.

> Agreed. But the discussion on system.map started with someone claiming the
> bug implied either a dessign problem in my package or that I'm
> incompetent.

It might have come up due to the wrong reasons (I don't judge), 
but you have to care for it neverheless.

Ciao,
Eike

Re: Bug#220289: general: make a new section: gis, for Geographic Information System packages

[Eike Sauer]

Dan Jacobson schrieb:
> Debian needs a new Packages section, named gis, or perhaps geography or
> cartography, to prevent the mapping related packages from being
> scattered in sections graphics and science, and misc, etc.? as at present.

I'd consider this section much too special.
Why not sort out which category (science IMHO)
is the right one and migrate there?

Ciao,
Eike

Re: status of Progeny projects

[Eike Sauer]

Peter Zoeller schrieb:
> I have been long time user of linux and I find the greatest weakness to
> be the ability to easily install applications which seems to be the
> intent of this group.  

I allways found it less easy to 

- go to mozilla website
- find the appropriate binary
- download it
- run the installer
- answer some qeustions
- delete the installer

than to

- apt-get install mozilla.

Ciao,
Eike

Re: gimp1.2: gimp package suggest non-free software

[Eike Sauer]

Ben Gertzfield schrieb:
> As I mentioned in a response to the bug report, this is mostly a
> nonissue, since the LZW patent has expired in the US and I've merged
> the -nonfree package back into the main package in the unstable Debian
> distribution.

As far as I know(*), the patent is still valid in Europe and Japan
until mid 2004. Shouldn't this matter for an international project?

Ciao,
Eike

(*) German source: http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/atr-11.06.03-001/

Re: gimp1.2: gimp package suggest non-free software

[Eike Sauer]

Mathieu Roy schrieb:
> As far I know, there are still no patent for software in Europe,
> whatever an European institution know to fail to comply to European
> rules may do.

Neither GIF nor LZW is software, though.
The patent is about the LZW compression algorithm.

Ciao,
Eike

Re: gimp1.2: gimp package suggest non-free software

[Eike Sauer]

Ben Gertzfield schrieb:
> good question.  How do we deal with this situation for other source
> projects that contain things like encryption that are outlawed in
> countries X, Y, and Z but OK in the US?

Establish non-non-US? ;o)

Ciao,
Eike

Re: Bug#220289: general: make a new section: gis, for Geographic Information System packages

[Eike Sauer]

Hi!

Simon Richter schrieb:
> How about "science/geography"?

Establishing subsections?
Or as a section name?
Either way, we should use "science/math", "science/pysics",
"science/biology", "science/whatever..." as well then.
I think geography&co neatly fits into the current science section.

Ciao,
Eike

Re: Victory Abah

[Eike Sauer]

Aaron M. Ucko schrieb:
> The offer is almost certainly a scam; please see
> .

You really mean he doesn't want to pay 152 million dollars
to everyone of us?!?
I'm very disappointed!

Ciao,
Eike

Re: gimp1.2: gimp package suggest non-free software

[Eike Sauer]

Ben Burton schrieb:
> The difference is probably that men have somewhat less of a history of
> being evaluated this way when people aren't joking.

Not sure.
Perhaps, men just recently found out that they are evaluated. *g*

Ciao,
Eike (m)

Re: Programming first steps.

[Eike Sauer]

Andrew M.A. Cater schrieb:
> They may be right - but, as noted elsewhere, much C++ is written by
> C programmers who don't necessarily use all the features of C++
> anyway.

...so don't become one of those and learn C++ _first_.

Ciao,
Eike

PS: I hope I got the message references right now.

"Gänseblümchen" and the startup process

[Eike Sauer]

Hi!

I wanted to set the background image of kdm's login screen to 
a file called "Gänseblümchen.jpeg" (Gänseblümchen is German 
for daisy flower), but I had to find out that l10n isn't set up that early.
The bug (#528937) is closed now, but I feel it should not be the
responsibility of kdm (gdm, xdm, ... who else?) to pull in localization.

Shouldn't this be done earlier in the startup process? Like in an init
script? I couldn't say for which packages it is reasonable to expect
localized environment. But then, if we're using dependency based init, 
the packages even could decide themselves...

Ciao,
Eike



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Re: Re-enter a package previously dropped ?

[Eike Sauer]

Hello!

Am Sonntag, 14. Juni 2009 schrieb Xavier Maillard:
> Concerning my ITP, is it alright ? I mean, is it good practice to
> put a previously dropped package into Debian again ?

The reasons given for dropping the package were:
* Package is out of date.
* Upstream appears inactive since 2003.
* Low popcon (< 100).
* Package is orphaned. (Orphaned in Dec 2007).
* Package is buggy.

Your commitment should solve 4 of those.
So I think you could go ahead.

Ciao,
Eike



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