On 1/3/2014 2:52 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
Barry S. Finkel writes:
> When I was working as a systems programmer with an IBM mainframe,
Interesting anecdote, but it addresses the wrong end of the issue. We
already know that distros should keep their packages up to date. The
question is why that doesn't happen. This:
> When I was managing a Mailman installation, I kept Mailman
> up-to-date, because I never knew when one of my lists would
> encounter a bug that had already been fixed.
leads to a more interesting question: And to which distribution did
you contribute package control files to allow all the users of that
distribution to benefit from your work? And did they immediately
install them, or did their QA group dither about testing them for
months?
What we try to do in XEmacs is allow the upstream developer to commit
directly to our package repository. But even then not all do, and we
don't really have a QA process (except for beta testing, so in
practice we're never out of beta for most packages :-). Few users are
willing to contribute maintenance, although many contribute "first
draft" patches and even whole packages.
It's not an easy problem.
I was using Ubuntu, and my management told me that I had to
install a package. So I spent some time learning how to take
the Debian/Ubuntu package, merge the current SourceForge source,
and generate a new package. I have posted on this list that I
did this. Only one person has requested info on what I did.
The problem I had with the Debian/Ubuntu package, besides the
fact that it was not the current version and that help might not
be available via this mailing list, was that there were a large
number of patches installed by the Debian support group.
Most of those patches were not documented, and I had no idea
what they did (or if they were needed). IIRC, Mark looked at
the patches a few years ago. There also was one patch that
deleted a library that, in some cases, was needed by Mailman.
When I built a new package from the current source I knew
1) exactly what code I was running, and
2) that I could receive excellent support from this list.
The problem, as I see it, with the Debian method is that when
Mark announces a new release of Mailman, the Debian support group
has to spend time re-fitting their patches. The ONLY Debian patch
that I kept was one that placed the Mailman libraries in the
proper directories for Debian/Ubuntu.
--Barry Finkel
------------------------------------------------------
Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users
Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3
Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9
Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/
Unsubscribe:
https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org
