Question for all candidates: Importance of unofficial arch..

Martin Zobel-Helas · External Since: Mar 12, 2005 Posts: 192

Hi,

this question is for all candidates:

How important are unofficial archives[1] for you? What whould you do to
support them, if you consider them important? What could be done to
integrate them into official Debian structure?

Martin

[1] http://www.debian-unofficial.org/
http://www.backports.org/
http://www.debian-multimedia.org/
and others.
--
[root@debian /root]# man real-life
No manual entry for real-life

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Raphael Hertzog · External Since: May 28, 2005 Posts: 461

Hi,

On Sun, 04 Mar 2007, Martin Zobel-Helas wrote:
> How important are unofficial archives[1] for you? What whould you do to
> support them, if you consider them important? What could be done to
> integrate them into official Debian structure?

All unofficial archives serve a purpose, but they are not all compatible
with Debian's primary goals.

I'm all in favor of integrating backports.org in a dedicated section
"<codename>/updates". The rules that govern backports.org are already very
similar to the usual Debian rules, so it shouldn't be a technical problem.
And we certainly have many users who want to run some specific new
upstream version of a small list of software. We should however advertise
clearly the limitations of that section if we're not able to offer the
same level of commitment than we do for our main repository.

I'm also interested in the integration of the volatile repository but it
looks like something is already in preparation... Smile

$ getent group volatile
volatile:x:1222:aba,zobel

The problem with debian-multimedia is AFAIK mainly license-related
problems and since Christian Marilalt is DD, I hope that he already tries
to integrate every bit that can be integrated into Debian proper.

I've never used debian-unofficial, but as I browse the site I see the name
of Daniel Baumann which is also a DD, so it looks like to face a similar
situation than debian-multimedia.

Supporting new repositories imply several changes that concerns primarily
the ftp-masters. If they don't have the time to add the required support, I'd
support the setup of a second dak installation accessible to volunteers
where they can implement the required changes and at the same time prove
to ftpmasters that they are capable, and can be considered as new members
of the team.

Cheers,
--
Raphaël Hertzog

Premier livre français sur Debian GNU/Linux :
http://www.ouaza.com/livre/admin-debian/

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Aigars Mahinovs · External Since: Apr 21, 2005 Posts: 19

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> How important are unofficial archives for you? What whould you do to
> support them, if you consider them important? What could be done to
> integrate them into official Debian structure?

If we would follow along the line of my distribution trunk proposal in
the platform, then such archives could become first-rate distributions
or distribution instances enjoying as much of the benefits as we would
like to give them.

- --
Best regards,
Aigars Mahinovs mailto:aigarius@debian.org
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Wouter Verhelst · External Since: Nov 08, 2004 Posts: 599

On Sun, Mar 04, 2007 at 12:50:22PM +0100, Martin Zobel-Helas wrote:
> Hi,
>
> this question is for all candidates:
>
> How important are unofficial archives[1] for you?

They are important, as they allow people to do stuff with their Debian
installation that isn't necessarily possible with Debian proper because
either Debian does not want to provide whatever the unofficial archives
provide, or because Debian can not provide that (for legal or practical
reasons).

> What whould you do to support them, if you consider them important?

It could make sense to add some of these currently non-official archives
to the official debian.org mirror network. However, this would have to
be decided on a case-by-case basis.

> What could be done to integrate them into official Debian structure?

Many things, most of which have already been implemented for some of
these non-official archives:

* check signatures on uploads against the Debian keyring, so that they
can be done by any Debian Developer
* mention their existance on the official Debian website and in
user-level documentation
* integrate them in automatic checking tools, such as the automated
lintian checking on lintian.debian.org, or the DDPO ("developer.php")
* eventually, if there is sufficient demand for this, create a suite on
debian.org to mirror them on official Debian mirrors

The last step, however, isn't something that should be done lightly, and
should probably come with necessary code patches, if any, provided by
the people asking for the inclusion of the non-official archive.

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