[W12.bis.dssnp] Semweb and FreedomBox

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Quoting Sebastian Tramp (2012-12-12 09:39:17)
> On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 08:42:12PM +0100, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> 
> > If you use project a and b today, but move to project c and d 
> > tomorrow, then you are right that it might be "waste" of my time
> 
> Thats exactly what I mean. We still test components which exists. 
> After the selection phase, we can give you the list if you want.

Thanks.  Makes sense.


> > I can most likely not help you if you base your work on non-Debian 
> > Node.
> > 
> > Nick Daly and Bdale Garbee found it "good enough" for them to use a 
> > shell script for generating their FreeodmBox images - even if that 
> > meant it is hard for others like you to hook into from odd angles.
> 
> I do not like that either and will try to maintain debian package 
> descriptions from the very beginning.
> 
> > Seems to be you do similar by using non-Debian Node and rely on NPM. 
> > :-(
> 
> What do you mean with non-debian? Can we provide the same current 
> version of node by doing some apt repo vodoo?
> 
> I am not sure what you mean here and open for suggestions.
> Or in another way: What is the pure-debian way to install nodejs 
> 0.8.14+ on testing or stable?

Uhm, the "Debian Pure Blend" way is to not develop anything new, only 
use Debian itself.  I guess that's not really an option here :-)

But the "pure-ish" way - i.e. aiming towards some day in the not too 
distant future becoming a Debian Pure Blend - is to use most possible of 
existing Debian, and for the parts not in Debian collaborate with Debian 
developers, both to gain knowledge on which non-Debian approach is the 
least likely to become an obstacle later, and also to pass knowledge 
about your non-Debian needs to stir an interest in extending Debian to 
cover it.

Example: I was unaware that you needed Nodejs 0.8.14 or newer.  If that 
is a hard requirement for your work, then I will prioritize getting such 
new version of Nodejs into Debian.

Example problem: the Nodejs .deb package you referenced uses the binary 
name "node" instead of "nodejs" as done in Debian.  That means you 
cannot use _any_ of the Debian packaged Node libraries but are forced to 
maintain _all_ of your Node environment separate from Debian.

Many ways of working is _possible_ with Debian, but only some of them 
are Debian-ish so are likely to be merged into Debian itself.  It is 
very very unlikely that Debian will support Nodejs binary provided as 
"node" after a year-long debate with the side-effect of Nodejs not 
getting included at all in the upcoming stable Debian release. :-(

So to answer (a slight distortion of) your concrete question: The 
pure-debian-ish(!) way to install nodejs 0.8.14+ on testing or stable is 
to work together with Debian developers on a) getting that nodejs 
available in _any_ Debian suite (i.e. unstable or experimental), and 
then b) getting that package backported to testing/stable.

I am Debian developer, I happen to be involved in maintaining Nodejs, 
and I am interested in supporting you.

Question then is if my "supporting you" really helps, or instead ties 
you down.

I do recognize how upstream-centered development might be faster to get 
going, but I fear that you will loose on the synergy of less coder 
oriented people being able to grab early on what you do, and gain 
unplanned and perhaps surprisingly angled feedback from them.  That's 
what I meant by comparing with the pile-of-shell approach of Nich Daly 
and Bdale Garbee: *Your project* is a surpringly angled feedback to 
their work - or lack thereof.


Oh, and BTW another example of IMO bad approach is your sharing that A13 
custom image: It is reusable only to those having an exact same size SD 
card, because you shared the final result instead of a tarball + 4-line 
shell script to format SD card and special-install bootloader files :-(

But you did it, and if it work for yourselves then you weren't stalled 
by doing it more elegantly (which means I am now spending time repeating 
those exact same steps with a slightly smaller SD card - time I could 
have spent compiling Debian-ish Nodejs package).


Hope that makes sense :-)


 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

 [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private
-------------- nächster Teil --------------
Ein Dateianhang mit Binärdaten wurde abgetrennt...
Dateiname   : nicht verfügbar
Dateityp    : application/pgp-signature
Dateigröße  : 836 bytes
Beschreibung: signature
URL         : <http://lists.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/pipermail/w12.bis.dssnp/attachments/20121212/eccbbe01/attachment.asc>