> That's an even more flawed argument. We're talking about packaging, not > development.
Packaging will differ if the maintainer thinks that an optional dep is better than another, or the option is useless etc... So, I think packagers must have some knowledge about the software they maintain. But I might be wrong. > (Personally, I'm suspicious of software and changes that are > distribution-specific.) Are you suspicious about the Debian Linux kernel? It have distro specific patches. (But I think and hope that they are reported upstream. Did not checked.) > (haven't tried this, though). I think you should. The only time I tried, it was for a package maintained by their developers named openmw. Trying installing it was not possible because of a version difference o libc6 IIRC. I tried to "force" the installation, to do it by hand, and the software just crashed. My opinion about that is that distros integrate patches on their softwares, for some things, and those patches makes things not working from a distro to another, even it the other is the ancestor. But I only tried with one package, so maybe other works nicely. I really think that the packaging is not so easy as it sounds. If it was, all developers would provide packages automagically generated for all distros, and this would not require maintainers. But strangely, that's not so common. Maybe because it's not that simple... -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/240b1cc0d06cee288900ffdd8a73b9ed.squir...@www.sud-ouest.org