Russel Winder wrote: >On Sun, 2011-06-19 at 21:19 +0200, Jacob Carlborg wrote: >[ . . . ] >> When I first started thinking about Orbit I decided for source >> packages. The reason for this is that the developer only have to >> create one package or doesn't have to build the app/lib for all >> supported platforms when releasing a new version of the package >> (although it would be good to know that it works on all supported >> platforms). >[ . . . ] > >OS-level package manages have this issue, Ports went for source and >compiling as needed on the grounds that this is most flexible, Debian, >Fedora, etc. went for binary on the grounds it is far, far easier for >the users. > >I find that most of the time MacPorts is fine as long as you only own >one computer, but for things like Boost, MacQt, etc. my machines takes >hours and hours to upgrade which really, really pisses me off. I find >Debian package far more straightforward and furthermore binary packages >can be cached locally so I only have to download once for all 4 >machines I have. With source download I end up compiling twice one >for each Mac OS X machine. So overall source packages suck -- even >though they are reputedly safer against security attacks. > >Ubuntu has introduced the idea of personal build farms, aka PPAs, which >work very well. This handles creating packages for all the version of >Ubuntu still in support. Using something like Buildbot, which although >supposedly a CI system can easily be "subverted" into being a package >creation farm. > >I guess the question is really should the package manager be easy for >developers or easy for users? If there are no packages because it is >too hard for developers to package then no users either. If developers >can do things easily, but it is hard for users, then no users so no >point in creating packages. > >It's worth noting that there is massive move in the Java arena to issue >binary, source and documentation artefacts -- where originally only >binary artefacts were released. This is for supporting IDEs. Clearly >source only packaging gets round this somewhat, but this means >compilation on the user's machine during install, and that leads to >suckiness -- see above for mild rant. >
It's possible to combine binary and source packages. Archlinux did that: by default you install prebuilt binary packages, but you can specify that you want to build certain packages by yourself. Archlinux also has a huge repository of source-only packages which always need to be build by the end user. AFAIK this system works quite well. -- Johannes Pfau