Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Patrick Ouellette]

On Tue, May 08, 2012 at 12:41:40PM +1000, Ben Finney wrote:
> 
> David Weinehall  writes:
> 
> > Wasn't the main reason (apart from the seniority argument) for
> > preserving the node name for ax25 to prevent remote unmonitored highly
> > important systems from failing?
> 
> If such systems are highly important, should we accomodate them
> remaining unmonitored?
> 
> Surely if they are unmonitored, then they are not considered
> sufficiently important to monitor. So “highly important” ceases to carry
> any weight in such cases. No?
> 

The systems are not "unmonitored" they are physically difficult to access.

One of the tools used to monitor them is connecting to them with the node 
application.


Pat


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Re: Bug#614907: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Jonas Smedegaard]

On 12-05-07 at 11:28pm, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Sun, May 06, 2012 at 09:49:11PM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> > On 12-05-06 at 10:22am, Steve Langasek wrote:
> > > On Sat, May 05, 2012 at 03:07:27AM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> > > > We have until now maintained Nodejs only in unstable because 
> > > > requests to rename axnode was met with either silence or refusal 
> > > > with the reasoning that axnode was more widely used in Debian 
> > > > than Nodejs.
> 
> > > > Obviously Nodejs is not widely used in Debian when initially 
> > > > packaged.  So I've simply waited until it was really sensible to 
> > > > make such comparison of popularity among the users of Debian.  
> > > > Which seems to be the case now - even if still impaired by 
> > > > Nodejs only offered to our users of unstable and experimental 
> > > > Debian.
> 
> > > I find this response from you *very* disappointing.  It implies 
> > > that you knew that you had a responsibility to rename the Nodejs 
> > > binary according to Policy, but that rather than acting in a 
> > > timely manner to persuade upstream of the importance of renaming, 
> > > you decided to wait until momentum was on your side so that you 
> > > could have an outcome in your favor.
> 
> > No, that is not what it means.  You are reading timings into it that 
> > I did not write there, and you are reading those timings wrong!
> 
> Ok, sorry for the misunderstanding.  That certainly is what I took 
> from your statement that you were waiting until it was "sensible" to 
> compare popularity, but it seems I misunderstood.

Your certainty is not flawed: That wasn't the detail you misunderstood.

I talked about waiting internally in Debian, you (in my understanding) 
lectured me about relationship with upstream.


 - Jonas

-- 
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 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Vincent Bernat]

OoO Pendant le journal télévisé du lundi 07 mai 2012, vers 20:41, Philip
Hands  disait :

>> Package: node
>> Depends: ax25-node
>> Conflicts: nodejs
>> -- /usr/sbin/node -> /usr/sbin/ax25-node
>> 
>> Package: ax25-node
>> -- /usr/sbin/ax25-node
>> 
>> Package: nodejs
>> Conflicts: node
>> -- /usr/bin/nodejs
>> -- /usr/bin/node -> /usr/bin/nodejs
>> 
>> > So this would need package replacement, which is a pain, and an
>> > exception for a policy violation -- is that enough to kill the idea?
>> 
>> I think it's an acceptable compromise under the circumstances.

> This seems a little one-sided, as it inflicts the bulk of the work on
> those that are less to blame.

I  don't  see  the  point   to  perfect  symmetry:  nodejs  contains  an
interpreter while ax25-node  contains a daemon and will  work out of the
box for most people (those that don't need custom scripts).

My point is that nodejs without /usr/bin/node is useless.

> It also prevents a HAM from deciding to dabble in Node.js while
> preserving the 'node' name for their ax25 use.

For this point only:

Package: nodejs
Depends: nodejs-interpreter
Conflicts: node
-- /usr/bin/node -> /usr/bin/nodejs

Package: nodejs-interpreter
-- /usr/bin/nodejs

But one additional package for people we are not even sure they exist...

> I don't really see the point of adding the symlink to nodejs if you're
> not putting it in a separate package -- one of the reasons I had for
> doing that split was that it might allow us to later provide popcon
> stats of the proportion's of node.js users that install the symlink
> package as part of evidence to persuade upstream that it might be worth
> entertaining a better binary name -- having them both in the same
> package discards that information.

I doubt that upstream will  rename anything after years of use. Upstream
also has a community to please.  And popcon may just be an indication on
the number  of our users that  are pissed enough to  install from source
because installing "nodejs" package did not deliver the right command.
-- 
Vincent Bernat ☯ http://vincent.bernat.im

printk(KERN_ERR "msp3400: chip reset failed, penguin on i2c bus?\n");
2.2.16 /usr/src/linux/drivers/char/msp3400.c


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Re: Bug#614907: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Steve Langasek]

On Sun, May 06, 2012 at 09:49:11PM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> On 12-05-06 at 10:22am, Steve Langasek wrote:
> > On Sat, May 05, 2012 at 03:07:27AM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> > > We have until now maintained Nodejs only in unstable because 
> > > requests to rename axnode was met with either silence or refusal 
> > > with the reasoning that axnode was more widely used in Debian than 
> > > Nodejs.

> > > Obviously Nodejs is not widely used in Debian when initially 
> > > packaged.  So I've simply waited until it was really sensible to 
> > > make such comparison of popularity among the users of Debian.  Which 
> > > seems to be the case now - even if still impaired by Nodejs only 
> > > offered to our users of unstable and experimental Debian.

> > I find this response from you *very* disappointing.  It implies that 
> > you knew that you had a responsibility to rename the Nodejs binary 
> > according to Policy, but that rather than acting in a timely manner to 
> > persuade upstream of the importance of renaming, you decided to wait 
> > until momentum was on your side so that you could have an outcome in 
> > your favor.

> No, that is not what it means.  You are reading timings into it that I 
> did not write there, and you are reading those timings wrong!

Ok, sorry for the misunderstanding.  That certainly is what I took from your
statement that you were waiting until it was "sensible" to compare
popularity, but it seems I misunderstood.

-- 
Steve Langasek   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/
slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org


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Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Ben Finney]

David Weinehall  writes:

> Wasn't the main reason (apart from the seniority argument) for
> preserving the node name for ax25 to prevent remote unmonitored highly
> important systems from failing?

If such systems are highly important, should we accomodate them
remaining unmonitored?

Surely if they are unmonitored, then they are not considered
sufficiently important to monitor. So “highly important” ceases to carry
any weight in such cases. No?

-- 
 \   “The generation of random numbers is too important to be left |
  `\to chance.” —Robert R. Coveyou |
_o__)  |
Ben Finney


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Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[David Weinehall]

On Mon, May 07, 2012 at 07:41:33PM +0100, Philip Hands wrote:
[snip]
> It also prevents a HAM from deciding to dabble in Node.js while
> preserving the 'node' name for their ax25 use.

Wasn't the main reason (apart from the seniority argument) for
preserving the node name for ax25 to prevent remote unmonitored highly
important systems from failing?  Surely such systems are not quite
candidates for dabbling with Node.js on...

That said, there's no way we can solve this in a clean way.  No matter
what solution is chosen in the end someone will suffer from it.  No
matter who wins, the users lose :S  And I don't blame the Debian
maintainers of either package.  I think that the upstream for Node.js
should've done their homework a bit better though, and that the ax25
upstream should've had a bit more imagination.  But shit happened
already.


Regards: David
-- 
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//  ~   //  Diamond-white roses of fire //
\)  http://www.acc.umu.se/~tao/(/   Beautiful hoar-frost   (/


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Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Simon McVittie]

On 07/05/12 19:41, Philip Hands wrote:
> The -legacy was meant
> to be an attention grabber, and perhaps to reflect a hope that at some
> point in the future one or both upstreams might switch to a better name.

I think "legacy" is rather misleading, since its upstream
(unfortunately) doesn't think there's anything "legacy" about that name.

nodejs-node? nodejs-compat? nodejs-namespace-grab?

> It occurs to me that if we're going to allow this form of
> conflicts-abuse, we should also insist that no dependencies are allowed
> on the conflicting packages, to ensure that only the distinct binary
> names are available for depending packages.

That sounds like a reasonable principle for cases like this where
installing the packages together makes sense (as opposed to packages
that Provide/Conflict over a common interface, like MTAs).

S


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Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Philip Hands]

On Sun, 6 May 2012 10:29:18 -0700, Steve Langasek  wrote:
> On Sat, May 05, 2012 at 08:29:40AM +0100, Philip Hands wrote:
> > How about doing the following:
> 
> >   node package replaced by a node-legacy package that contains no more
> >   than a README and a symlink node --> ax25-node, and depends on
> >   ax25-node
> 
> As mentioned by Carsten Hey on debian-ctte, we should certainly keep the
> same binary package name ('node') to ensure smooth upgrades for users that
> already have it installed.
> 
> >   ax25-node package, which contains what node does now, with the binary
> >   renamed
> 
> >   nodejs package replaced by a node.js-legacy (or a better name if there
> >   is one) package that contains no more than a README and a symlink node
> >   --> node.js (or whatever), and depends on node.js
> 
> >   node.js package that is the nodejs package with a renamed binary.
> 
> > and make node-legacy and  node.js-legacy conflict.
> 
> Because Node.js is a scripting interpreter, I believe there's no point in
> trying to declare the package on the nodejs side 'legacy' unless there's a
> committment from upstream to deprecate the /usr/bin/node name.
> 
> So from my perspective, the packages would be:
> 
>   Package: node
>   Depends: ax25-node
>   Conflicts: nodejs
> -- /usr/sbin/node -> /usr/sbin/ax25-node
> 
>   Package: ax25-node
> -- /usr/sbin/ax25-node
>   
>   Package: nodejs
>   Conflicts: node
> -- /usr/bin/nodejs
> -- /usr/bin/node -> /usr/bin/nodejs
> 
> > So this would need package replacement, which is a pain, and an
> > exception for a policy violation -- is that enough to kill the idea?
> 
> I think it's an acceptable compromise under the circumstances.

This seems a little one-sided, as it inflicts the bulk of the work on
those that are less to blame.

It also prevents a HAM from deciding to dabble in Node.js while
preserving the 'node' name for their ax25 use.

I suppose if the ax25 maintainers think that this counts as a
compromise, that's up to them, but I actually rejected something very
similar to this while I was formulating my suggestion on the basis that
it lacks symmetry and so seems unfair.

I don't really see the point of adding the symlink to nodejs if you're
not putting it in a separate package -- one of the reasons I had for
doing that split was that it might allow us to later provide popcon
stats of the proportion's of node.js users that install the symlink
package as part of evidence to persuade upstream that it might be worth
entertaining a better binary name -- having them both in the same
package discards that information.

It also fails to draw people's attention to the problem as much as the
dual use of -legacy named packages -- N.B. I wasn't expecting those
packages to be retired quickly (or perhaps ever).  The -legacy was meant
to be an attention grabber, and perhaps to reflect a hope that at some
point in the future one or both upstreams might switch to a better name.

It occurs to me that if we're going to allow this form of
conflicts-abuse, we should also insist that no dependencies are allowed
on the conflicting packages, to ensure that only the distinct binary
names are available for depending packages.

If we accept that restriction, then you'd want there to be a separate
package for the Node.js symlink, as otherwise no package would be able
to declare a dependency on Node.js, which would be inconvenient.

Cheers, Phil.
-- 
|)|  Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560]http://www.hands.com/
|-|  HANDS.COM Ltd.http://www.uk.debian.org/
|(|  10 Onslow Gardens, South Woodford, London  E18 1NE  ENGLAND


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Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Jonas Smedegaard]

On 12-05-06 at 11:00pm, Thomas Preud'homme wrote:
> Le dimanche 6 mai 2012 21:49:11, Jonas Smedegaard a écrit :
> > Greetings, dear Debian developer,
> > 
> > [replying via bugreport as I am not subscribed to tech-ctte@d.o]
> > 
> > On 12-05-06 at 10:22am, Steve Langasek wrote:
> > > On Sat, May 05, 2012 at 03:07:27AM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> > > > We have until now maintained Nodejs only in unstable because 
> > > > requests to rename axnode was met with either silence or refusal 
> > > > with the reasoning that axnode was more widely used in Debian 
> > > > than Nodejs.
> > > > 
> > > > Obviously Nodejs is not widely used in Debian when initially 
> > > > packaged.  So I've simply waited until it was really sensible to 
> > > > make such comparison of popularity among the users of Debian.  
> > > > Which seems to be the case now - even if still impaired by 
> > > > Nodejs only offered to our users of unstable and experimental 
> > > > Debian.
> > > 
> > > I find this response from you *very* disappointing.  It implies 
> > > that you knew that you had a responsibility to rename the Nodejs 
> > > binary according to Policy, but that rather than acting in a 
> > > timely manner to persuade upstream of the importance of renaming, 
> > > you decided to wait until momentum was on your side so that you 
> > > could have an outcome in your favor.
> > 
> > No, that is not what it means.  You are reading timings into it that 
> > I did not write there, and you are reading those timings wrong!
> 
> I believe the writing was just misleading and Steve just misunderstood 
> it. I understood the same myself and I don't think I have any a priori 
> on this since I am not at all involved. I believe this feeling come 
> from the sentence "I've simply waiting until it was really sensible to 
> make such a comparison of popularity".
> 
> So let's just assume it was a misunderstanding and go back to 
> technical argument in order to avoid this discussion to become too 
> heated.

I am perfectly calm :-)


> > > My understanding is that Node.js is a three-year-old project, and 
> > > that the namespace issue was first raised upstream at least a year 
> > > and a half ago. We would have been in a much better position to 
> > > resolve this in a manner that does right by our existing ham 
> > > community if you had lived up to your moral obligations as a 
> > > Debian developer *then* instead of letting the issue fester.
> > 
> > Your moral obligation, before throwing accusations like that, is to 
> > at least investigate the issue, and ideally first asking nicely.

...but even when calm, I do not approve of a fellow developer 
patronizing me like that.

If _that_ can be the last word on this little sidestep, I am fine that 
we all move on with the technical discussion.


 - Jonas

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

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Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Thomas Preud'homme]

Le dimanche 6 mai 2012 21:49:11, Jonas Smedegaard a écrit :
> Greetings, dear Debian developer,
> 
> [replying via bugreport as I am not subscribed to tech-ctte@d.o]
> 
> On 12-05-06 at 10:22am, Steve Langasek wrote:
> > On Sat, May 05, 2012 at 03:07:27AM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> > > We have until now maintained Nodejs only in unstable because
> > > requests to rename axnode was met with either silence or refusal
> > > with the reasoning that axnode was more widely used in Debian than
> > > Nodejs.
> > > 
> > > Obviously Nodejs is not widely used in Debian when initially
> > > packaged.  So I've simply waited until it was really sensible to
> > > make such comparison of popularity among the users of Debian.  Which
> > > seems to be the case now - even if still impaired by Nodejs only
> > > offered to our users of unstable and experimental Debian.
> > 
> > I find this response from you *very* disappointing.  It implies that
> > you knew that you had a responsibility to rename the Nodejs binary
> > according to Policy, but that rather than acting in a timely manner to
> > persuade upstream of the importance of renaming, you decided to wait
> > until momentum was on your side so that you could have an outcome in
> > your favor.
> 
> No, that is not what it means.  You are reading timings into it that I
> did not write there, and you are reading those timings wrong!

I believe the writing was just misleading and Steve just misunderstood it. I 
understood the same myself and I don't think I have any a priori on this since 
I am not at all involved. I believe this feeling come from the sentence "I've 
simply waiting until it was really sensible to make such a comparison of 
popularity".

So let's just assume it was a misunderstanding and go back to technical 
argument in order to avoid this discussion to become too heated.

> 
> > My understanding is that Node.js is a three-year-old project, and that
> > the namespace issue was first raised upstream at least a year and a
> > half ago. We would have been in a much better position to resolve this
> > in a manner that does right by our existing ham community if you had
> > lived up to your moral obligations as a Debian developer *then*
> > instead of letting the issue fester.
> 
> Your moral obligation, before throwing accusations like that, is to at
> least investigate the issue, and ideally first asking nicely.
> 
> You can read from nodejs packaging changelog and git commits when I got
> involved in the maintainance, and you can read from bugreports and
> mailinglists how my fellow maintainer, Jérémy Lal, conducted those moral
> obligations which you claim that I should've done before I even knew
> what "node" meant.
> 
> > 'node' is a stupid name for a program, and this should have been
> > impressed upon Node.js upstream early and often.  We would have been
> > in a position, together with other distributions, to force a sensible
> > upstream name.  I believe we no longer are in a position to do so, and
> > even if we did, the transition now would be many times more disruptive
> > for users than if this had been dealt with in 2010.
> > 
> > > If Debian is frozen tomorrow, then Nodejs will not be part of it,
> > > for the very reason that I *did* respect Policy.
> > 
> > It may not be part of the release, but it will still be a mess for
> > everyone involved.
> 
> Thanks to stpid actions by people not doing their homework, yes.
> 
> 
>  - Jonas

Best regards,

Thomas Preud'homme


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Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Greetings, dear Debian developer,

[replying via bugreport as I am not subscribed to tech-ctte@d.o]

On 12-05-06 at 10:22am, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Sat, May 05, 2012 at 03:07:27AM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> > We have until now maintained Nodejs only in unstable because 
> > requests to rename axnode was met with either silence or refusal 
> > with the reasoning that axnode was more widely used in Debian than 
> > Nodejs.
> 
> > Obviously Nodejs is not widely used in Debian when initially 
> > packaged.  So I've simply waited until it was really sensible to 
> > make such comparison of popularity among the users of Debian.  Which 
> > seems to be the case now - even if still impaired by Nodejs only 
> > offered to our users of unstable and experimental Debian.
> 
> I find this response from you *very* disappointing.  It implies that 
> you knew that you had a responsibility to rename the Nodejs binary 
> according to Policy, but that rather than acting in a timely manner to 
> persuade upstream of the importance of renaming, you decided to wait 
> until momentum was on your side so that you could have an outcome in 
> your favor.

No, that is not what it means.  You are reading timings into it that I 
did not write there, and you are reading those timings wrong!


> My understanding is that Node.js is a three-year-old project, and that 
> the namespace issue was first raised upstream at least a year and a 
> half ago. We would have been in a much better position to resolve this 
> in a manner that does right by our existing ham community if you had 
> lived up to your moral obligations as a Debian developer *then* 
> instead of letting the issue fester.

Your moral obligation, before throwing accusations like that, is to at 
least investigate the issue, and ideally first asking nicely.

You can read from nodejs packaging changelog and git commits when I got 
involved in the maintainance, and you can read from bugreports and 
mailinglists how my fellow maintainer, Jérémy Lal, conducted those moral 
obligations which you claim that I should've done before I even knew 
what "node" meant.


> 'node' is a stupid name for a program, and this should have been 
> impressed upon Node.js upstream early and often.  We would have been 
> in a position, together with other distributions, to force a sensible 
> upstream name.  I believe we no longer are in a position to do so, and 
> even if we did, the transition now would be many times more disruptive 
> for users than if this had been dealt with in 2010.
> 
> > If Debian is frozen tomorrow, then Nodejs will not be part of it, 
> > for the very reason that I *did* respect Policy.
> 
> It may not be part of the release, but it will still be a mess for 
> everyone involved.

Thanks to stpid actions by people not doing their homework, yes.


 - Jonas

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

 [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private


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Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Steve Langasek]

On Sat, May 05, 2012 at 03:07:27AM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> We have until now maintained Nodejs only in unstable because requests to 
> rename axnode was met with either silence or refusal with the reasoning 
> that axnode was more widely used in Debian than Nodejs.

> Obviously Nodejs is not widely used in Debian when initially packaged.  
> So I've simply waited until it was really sensible to make such 
> comparison of popularity among the users of Debian.  Which seems to be 
> the case now - even if still impaired by Nodejs only offered to our 
> users of unstable and experimental Debian.

I find this response from you *very* disappointing.  It implies that you
knew that you had a responsibility to rename the Nodejs binary according to
Policy, but that rather than acting in a timely manner to persuade upstream
of the importance of renaming, you decided to wait until momentum was on
your side so that you could have an outcome in your favor.

My understanding is that Node.js is a three-year-old project, and that the
namespace issue was first raised upstream at least a year and a half ago.
We would have been in a much better position to resolve this in a manner
that does right by our existing ham community if you had lived up to your
moral obligations as a Debian developer *then* instead of letting the issue
fester.

'node' is a stupid name for a program, and this should have been impressed
upon Node.js upstream early and often.  We would have been in a position,
together with other distributions, to force a sensible upstream name.  I
believe we no longer are in a position to do so, and even if we did, the
transition now would be many times more disruptive for users than if this
had been dealt with in 2010.

> If Debian is frozen tomorrow, then Nodejs will not be part of it, for 
> the very reason that I *did* respect Policy.

It may not be part of the release, but it will still be a mess for everyone
involved.

-- 
Steve Langasek   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/
slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org


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Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Steve Langasek]

On Sat, May 05, 2012 at 08:29:40AM +0100, Philip Hands wrote:
> How about doing the following:

>   node package replaced by a node-legacy package that contains no more
>   than a README and a symlink node --> ax25-node, and depends on
>   ax25-node

As mentioned by Carsten Hey on debian-ctte, we should certainly keep the
same binary package name ('node') to ensure smooth upgrades for users that
already have it installed.

>   ax25-node package, which contains what node does now, with the binary
>   renamed

>   nodejs package replaced by a node.js-legacy (or a better name if there
>   is one) package that contains no more than a README and a symlink node
>   --> node.js (or whatever), and depends on node.js

>   node.js package that is the nodejs package with a renamed binary.

> and make node-legacy and  node.js-legacy conflict.

Because Node.js is a scripting interpreter, I believe there's no point in
trying to declare the package on the nodejs side 'legacy' unless there's a
committment from upstream to deprecate the /usr/bin/node name.

So from my perspective, the packages would be:

  Package: node
  Depends: ax25-node
  Conflicts: nodejs
-- /usr/sbin/node -> /usr/sbin/ax25-node

  Package: ax25-node
-- /usr/sbin/ax25-node
  
  Package: nodejs
  Conflicts: node
-- /usr/bin/nodejs
-- /usr/bin/node -> /usr/bin/nodejs

> So this would need package replacement, which is a pain, and an
> exception for a policy violation -- is that enough to kill the idea?

I think it's an acceptable compromise under the circumstances.

-- 
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Debian Developer   to set it on, and I can move the world.
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Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Russ Allbery]

Thibaut Paumard  writes:

> As I understand it, Policy is broken here: if the two binaries where
> installed in /usr/bin, it would be fine (Policy-wise) to Conflict.

Our current Policy specifically prohibits that.  See Policy 10.1:

Two different packages must not install programs with different
functionality but with the same filenames. (The case of two programs
having the same functionality but different implementations is handled
via "alternatives" or the "Conflicts" mechanism. See Maintainer
Scripts, Section 3.9 and Conflicting binary packages - Conflicts,
Section 7.4 respectively.) If this case happens, one of the programs
must be renamed. The maintainers should report this to the
debian-devel mailing list and try to find a consensus about which
program will have to be renamed. If a consensus cannot be reached,
both programs must be renamed.

If there's a gap in Policy, it's actually around the current situation
where the two binaries don't have the same paths, since it's not clear
what Policy means by "filename".  But it's pretty obvious that the intent
of Policy is also to prohibit binaries with different functionality in
sbin and bin, given how unstable of a situation that creates with varying
PATH.

Now, that certainly doesn't rule out the sorts of solutions we're talking
about.  As I mentioned elsewhere, the point of Policy is to make the
system usable, not to have packages follow Policy just for their own sake.
If we come up with a better way of solving this situation that requires an
exception to Policy for transitional or compatibility packages, I think
that's fine.

-- 
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Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Thibaut Paumard]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Hi,

Le 05/05/12 09:29, Philip Hands a écrit :
> On Fri, 4 May 2012 19:00:10 +0200, Pau Garcia i Quiles
>  wrote: ...
>> Agreed. That's why my proposal was that *all* of those (Debian, 
>> Fedora, Suse, MacPorts and brew) did the rename, not just us
>> (Debian). It's certainly not nice to push upstream to do
>> something they don't want to do, but when upstream is not doing
>> their due diligence...
> 
> As a lapsed HAM who's not transmitted anything for about 20 years,
> and someone vaguely aware of node.js, I feel relatively unbiased
> about this.

I'm just an unbiased reader of Debian devel, I don't care for either
package (but I care for Debian). Your proposal seems very sane to me.

> How about doing the following:
> 
> node package replaced by a node-legacy package that contains no
> more than a README and a symlink node --> ax25-node, and depends
> on ax25-node
> 
> ax25-node package, which contains what node does now, with the
> binary renamed

In addition, node-legacy could Provide node, so that it is installed
on system upgrade for systems where it was there before, with an
explanation that this package is for transition purpose and the
implications of removing it.
[...]
> So this would need package replacement, which is a pain, and an 
> exception for a policy violation -- is that enough to kill the
> idea?

As I understand it, Policy is broken here: if the two binaries where
installed in /usr/bin, it would be fine (Policy-wise) to Conflict.  We
have here a rare (hopefully) instance where the conflicting command
name are not file conflicts, which just happens to be badly handled by
policy.

Regards, Thibaut.
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Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Philip Hands]

On Fri, 4 May 2012 19:00:10 +0200, Pau Garcia i Quiles  
wrote:
...
> Agreed. That's why my proposal was that *all* of those (Debian,
> Fedora, Suse, MacPorts and brew) did the rename, not just us (Debian).
> It's certainly not nice to push upstream to do something they don't
> want to do, but when upstream is not doing their due diligence...

As a lapsed HAM who's not transmitted anything for about 20 years, and
someone vaguely aware of node.js, I feel relatively unbiased about this.

How about doing the following:

  node package replaced by a node-legacy package that contains no more
  than a README and a symlink node --> ax25-node, and depends on
  ax25-node

  ax25-node package, which contains what node does now, with the binary
  renamed

  nodejs package replaced by a node.js-legacy (or a better name if there
  is one) package that contains no more than a README and a symlink node
  --> node.js (or whatever), and depends on node.js

  node.js package that is the nodejs package with a renamed binary.

and make node-legacy and  node.js-legacy conflict.

The problems with this would seem to be the potential pain of renaming
packages, and the fact that using conflicts like that is a policy
violation -- could we perhaps make an exception for a case like this on
the basis that the package descriptions could spell out why the
conflict is there.

The result would be that either camp can install the -legacy package and
carry on unaffected, and anyone that needs both simply avoids the
-legacy packages, and fixes any hard-coded paths on their system, which
they'll know to do because they'll be a (probably more cluefull than
average) combined HAM and Node.js user who's been pointed at the READMEs
by the conflict and the package descriptions.

The -legacy naming will apply a gentle pressure to just use the real
packages, which will leave the door open to upstreams to see the light
and change their default name, but not so much pressure that they'll get
upset about it.

The READMEs of all the packages could refer to why this was done, and
how to get what you want depending one which of the various permutations
of behaviours you want.

So this would need package replacement, which is a pain, and an
exception for a policy violation -- is that enough to kill the idea?

Cheers, Phil.
-- 
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|-|  HANDS.COM Ltd.http://www.uk.debian.org/
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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Hi Patrick,

On 12-05-03 at 05:28pm, Patrick Ouellette wrote:
> On Thu, May 03, 2012 at 05:13:09PM -0400, Chris Knadle wrote:
> > 
> > Drat.  I forgot about APRS. APRS has become fairly popular among 
> > hams, so much so that it now comes built-in to several radios, and 
> > even HTs (Handy-Talkies).
> > 
> > APRS is a system for location reporting.  It's also very commonly 
> > used to track experimental weather balloons at high altitudes, 
> > because apparently GPS stops working at around 30,000 feet.  [The 
> > original high-altitude MIT balloon launch that many others have 
> > duplicated uses APRS, and I know of other groups using it for this 
> > purpose also.]  APRS is also commonly used by hams to track 
> > themselves and/or their cars and loved ones as they drive around.
> > 
> > The rigs used in cars likely aren't running a Linux OS, but the base 
> > station nodes that receive and report the APRS traffic probably are, 
> > and as Debian has been friendly to hams it's one of the more likely 
> > to be used there.
> > 
> 
> Continue to say DRAT!  The handwriting is on the wall.  Very few have 
> come out even marginally supporting the ham radio claim other than 
> myself.
> 
> Frankly, given the lack of response from the Debian ham community I'm 
> inclined to no longer maintain the ax25 packages and let them drop 
> from Debian.
> 
> Three other people are listed as uploaders on ax25-apps: Jaime Robles, 
> Hamish Moffatt, and Ramakrishnan Muthukrishnan.  I haven't heard from 
> any of them.  Haven't heard from our QSSTV supporter either (Steve 
> Kostecke).

I dearly appreciate your input in this discussion, and sincerely hope 
that you will not give up on maintaining that ham radio package!

I do not use ham radio myself, but I recognize its relevancy for others, 
and I do not want it out of Debian.


 - Jonas

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Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Jonas Smedegaard]

On 12-05-02 at 05:10pm, Patrick Ouellette wrote:
> On Tue, May 01, 2012 at 08:22:05PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> > 
> > Maybe we should short-circuit this part of the conversation, since 
> > it doesn't sound like you're horribly interested in agreeing to 
> > change the name of node in the existing package.  :)
> > 
> 
> Actually, despite my vigorous defense of the ham radio use of node as 
> a binary name, I am not adverse to renaming it provided it can be done 
> in a manner that minimally disrupts the users.
> 
> I believe the Node.js people need to help since they are the "late 
> comers" and their upstream seems to be the issue, and they ignored 
> policy at their peril to force the issue.

If I ignored Policy, as you keep saying, I would have lowered bug#611698 
to a non-RC severity.

We have until now maintained Nodejs only in unstable because requests to 
rename axnode was met with either silence or refusal with the reasoning 
that axnode was more widely used in Debian than Nodejs.

Obviously Nodejs is not widely used in Debian when initially packaged.  
So I've simply waited until it was really sensible to make such 
comparison of popularity among the users of Debian.  Which seems to be 
the case now - even if still impaired by Nodejs only offered to our 
users of unstable and experimental Debian.

If Debian is frozen tomorrow, then Nodejs will not be part of it, for 
the very reason that I *did* respect Policy.


> I'm more than a bit disappointed that this will be the second time a 
> ham radio tool in Debian is forced to use a name the wider Linux ham 
> community does not use.  No one seems to be considering the issues or 
> complications caused to the ham users.  I've heard the assertion that 
> the ham users are a "smaller" community, but I have not seen the 
> numbers.  It seems the issue has come down to a popularity contest, 
> and since the Node.js folks don't understand ham radio the ham radio 
> people will be made to bear the burden of the change.

I do not want this to be judged _only_ on popularity, but it _is_ 
relevant - which you've also indicated yourself, e.g. when asking if 
Nodejs is of any relevancy at all, and when pointing out that axnode has 
a substantial userbase.

I am happy that this discussion is finally happening.


 - Jonas

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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Jonas Smedegaard]

On 12-05-03 at 10:40am, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Patrick Ouellette  writes:
> > How many people use Node.js?  I had never heard of it until this 
> > came up, and I work in IT with web development teams.
> 
> Relative numbers really isn't the point, and I'm sorry I distracted us 
> all with that.  The point is that the node documentation says that 
> it's meant to be run via inetd, and that's a fairly easy thing to 
> update in a postinst in a transitional package and be done with it.  
> The popularity question is whether Node.js is widely-enough used to 
> warrant the effort, and I'm fairly sure that's the case based on 
> discussion in Communications of the ACM articles, professional 
> discussions with colleagues, etc.  Not to mention that the popcon 
> count for the nodejs package is getting fairly strong (stronger than 
> nearly all the packages I maintain, that's for sure).
> 
> > FWIW, the bug log from Node.js when they examined the Debian 
> > installations of each found them to be a similar number as reported 
> > by popcorn.
> 
> That certainly isn't true any more.  nodejs now has almost ten times 
> as many users reporting in popcon as node.

...and that popularity with nodejs yet unavailable in stable or testing!


 - Jonas

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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[brian m. carlson]

On Fri, May 04, 2012 at 09:03:55AM +0200, Vincent Bernat wrote:
> OoO En  cette fin de nuit blanche  du vendredi 04 mai  2012, vers 06:11,
> Hamish Moffatt  disait :
> 
> > Secondly if node.js is usually just used via #!, I'm not sure why it's in 
> > $PATH at all - why not in /usr/lib?
> 
> Neither "#!/usr/bin/node" nor "#!/usr/bin/env  node" will work then.

I have seen a lot of perl scripts in the wild that use
#!/usr/local/bin/perl.  Users are expected to fix those up themselves.
I understand it's an inconvenience, but honestly, if you can't fix up a
shebang yourself, you have no business programming at all (and thus
using node.js).  This is one of the issues that occurs when moving
scripts between different systems, just like changing #!/bin/sh to
#!/bin/bash for certain scripts coming from RedHat systems.

(Full disclosure: I use neither package, although I am more likely in
the future to use node.js than the ham package.)

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Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Pau Garcia i Quiles]

On Fri, May 4, 2012 at 6:53 PM, Steve Langasek  wrote:
> Hi Pau,
>
> On Fri, May 04, 2012 at 04:24:21PM +0200, Pau Garcia i Quiles wrote:
>> Regarding the often-mentioned "many users run 'node script' from the
>> command-line"... so what? If we can get enough distributions (Debian,
>> Suse, Fedora, MacPorts and brew would likely be enough) to rename the
>> node.js binary, upstream will be forced to change from /usr/bin/node
>> to /usr/bin/nodejs
>
> Compare this with ruby, where the outcome of Debian diverging from upstream
> was that the large and vocal upstream community shouted from the rooftops
> that our packages were broken and should never be used, until eventually
> (AIUI) Debian backed down.
>
> Engaging in brinksmanship with the upstream on such matters is not always
> going to give a favorable outcome, even if we have other distribution
> maintainers on our side; and in the meantime it's always unpleasant for the
> users caught in the middle.

Agreed. That's why my proposal was that *all* of those (Debian,
Fedora, Suse, MacPorts and brew) did the rename, not just us (Debian).
It's certainly not nice to push upstream to do something they don't
want to do, but when upstream is not doing their due diligence...

-- 
Pau Garcia i Quiles
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(Due to my workload, I may need 10 days to answer)


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Steve Langasek]

Hi Pau,

On Fri, May 04, 2012 at 04:24:21PM +0200, Pau Garcia i Quiles wrote:
> Regarding the often-mentioned "many users run 'node script' from the
> command-line"... so what? If we can get enough distributions (Debian,
> Suse, Fedora, MacPorts and brew would likely be enough) to rename the
> node.js binary, upstream will be forced to change from /usr/bin/node
> to /usr/bin/nodejs

Compare this with ruby, where the outcome of Debian diverging from upstream
was that the large and vocal upstream community shouted from the rooftops
that our packages were broken and should never be used, until eventually
(AIUI) Debian backed down.

Engaging in brinksmanship with the upstream on such matters is not always
going to give a favorable outcome, even if we have other distribution
maintainers on our side; and in the meantime it's always unpleasant for the
users caught in the middle.

-- 
Steve Langasek   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer   to set it on, and I can move the world.
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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Russ Allbery]

The Fungi  writes:

> I think this is part of the misunderstanding. If these systems are nodes
> on an AX.25 network, what's being renamed (and potentially broken) is
> the userspace binary which connects the machine to the network. Think of
> it as if you're suggesting a rename of /usr/sbin/sshd to
> /usr/sbin/secureshelld. Sure it's usually only started from packaged
> scripts and managed configuration files, but when it's also your only
> way into some remote systems that has a much greater potential to render
> them indefinitely inaccessible.

Yes, this is something I'd not realized before and am now realizing.
Also, the point that starting the service from inetd isn't the only way
that it's started, and it may be embedded in custom scripts and the like,
was new information for me.

Contrary to how it may have sounded from my previous messages, it really
isn't that I want to discount the effect on the ham radio community, and I
completely agree with other posters that having Debian serve the needs of
the ham radio community is important for a wide variety of reasons.

Raphael's approach of creating a compatibility symlink in postinst during
upgrades but not for new installs sounds better to me the more I think
about it, since that addresses the major concern of breaking someone's
system during an upgrade.  It's not ideal in terms of making the conflict
go away, but it does address the problem going forward, if not on
currently-running systems.

-- 
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org)   


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Pau Garcia i Quiles]

Hi,

What are other distributions doing?

I've check and OpenSuse apparently lives happy with having
/usr/sbin/node for axnode and /usr/bin/node for node.js. Has anyone
contacted them about this?

Regarding the often-mentioned "many users run 'node script' from the
command-line"... so what? If we can get enough distributions (Debian,
Suse, Fedora, MacPorts and brew would likely be enough) to rename the
node.js binary, upstream will be forced to change from /usr/bin/node
to /usr/bin/nodejs

If this were some desktop application, I'd have doubts, but axnode
being a daemon which runs on remote locations which may become
isolated after a rename just because the JavaScript toolkit of the
week decided to use a very generic name... sorry but no, does not look
good to me.



On Sat, Apr 28, 2012 at 3:31 AM, Carl Fürstenberg  wrote:
> Hello,
>
> There has been an log struggle between the nodejs package and the node
> package, which is still unresolved (bug #611698 for example) And I
> wonder now what the future should look like.
>
> To summarize the problem:
> * the nodejs upstream binary is called "node", and the upstream
> developers have refused to change it's binary name to nodejs for
> debian;
> * The the hamradio package "node" shipping a binary called "node", and
> as it's so old, the developers argue that the package must ship a
> binary called "node" or breakage will occur.
> * The reason the nodejs developers want to ship the binary as "node"
> is because all programs written for nodejs all has /usr/bin/node in
> it's shebang
> * the nodejs package are not allowed to conflict on the node package
> just because the binary name is the same
>
> As I'm not a hamradio user, I'm off course biased towards letting
> nodejs having the "node" binary and let it pass to testing. But we
> must find a solution to this, as nodejs is getting more and more used,
> and developers are forced to install nodejs from source to be able to
> use it instead of install it via the package manager.
>
> Regards,
>
> Carl Fürstenberg
>
>
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Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Charles Plessy]

Le Thu, May 03, 2012 at 12:39:04PM -0400, Joey Hess a écrit :
> 
> Consider a package that contains a node.js script, which is not the
> primary purpose of the package. So it Recommends, rather than depends
> on nodejs. (Let's assume it uses #!/usr/bin/env node, and for the sake
> of example is something root might run, so /usr/sbin could be in PATH.)
> 
> Using Conflicts makes this script behave very unfortunatly in certian
> circumstances. If some third package came along and added another node
> binary, and conflicted with node.js, we would probably call that package
> RC buggy, as it breaks unrelated software. So, having conflicting
> packages of this sort makes using Recommends, or even Suggests, a
> minefield, and should be avoided.

This is a good point, but on the other hand there is the alternative conclusion
that it argues for using Depends instead of Recommends, or moving the script
out of the default path.  If the program were not a script but a binary that is
linked to a library, I think it would be considered to be a bug to only
recommend that library even if the program is not important.  Dependance on an
interpreter is not that different.

While the scenario for breakage that you gave is quite a corner case, the
general situation, to have in a package some accessory programs for which we
are reluctant to depend on everything they need (python, ruby, etc.), is quite
frequent.  I would welcome some guidelines here.  Perhaps we are too shy
creating accessory packages that contain only a few files ?  I do not remember
seeing a quantitative evaluation of what is the cost of adding a small package
to the pool.

Cheers,

-- 
Charles Plessy
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[The Fungi]

On 2012-05-04 09:03:19 +0100 (+0100), Jon Dowland wrote:
[...]
> So some form of access to the machine would be required to create
> the problem, be it physical or remote. The same access should be
> used to fix the problem.
[...]

I think this is part of the misunderstanding. If these systems are
nodes on an AX.25 network, what's being renamed (and potentially
broken) is the userspace binary which connects the machine to the
network. Think of it as if you're suggesting a rename of
/usr/sbin/sshd to /usr/sbin/secureshelld. Sure it's usually only
started from packaged scripts and managed configuration files, but
when it's also your only way into some remote systems that has a
much greater potential to render them indefinitely inaccessible.
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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Jon Dowland]

On Thu, May 03, 2012 at 04:20:46PM -0400, Patrick Ouellette wrote:
> On Thu, May 03, 2012 at 10:11:41PM +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> > 
> > > You also don't address the issue of a user who installs both packages
> > > and now gets varying behavior depending on their $PATH - a result not
> > > of a local administrator's action, but of the Debian package's actions.
> > 
> > If node gets renamed to ax25-node, the conflict will disappear, no?
> 
> Not if your backwards compatibility symlink is there.

One could identify the compatibility symlink (vs. a local user created symlink)
by another layer of indirection:

/usr/sbin/node -> /usr/share/node/compatibity-symlink -> /usr/sbin/

Then, either node or nodejs could manipulate the symlink without interfering
with local customisations.


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Jon Dowland]

On Thu, May 03, 2012 at 02:26:33PM -0400, Patrick Ouellette wrote:
> One of the considerable costs involves the number of systems in place in
> the ham community that are not easily physically accessible should the
> upgrade/change break the system.  These systems may be on mountain tops,
> high buildings, or other high structures with significant challenges
> to accessing the locations.  These systems may be (usually are) part
> of emergency communications plans and are relied on to help in the
> event of a disaster.

Should the outcome be that the node package renames the binary, and should you
(or whoever does the work) manage to do it wrong, to end up in the scenario you
describe; the machines would only be affected upon upgrade. So some form of
access to the machine would be required to create the problem, be it physical
or remote. The same access should be used to fix the problem.

An experienced ham operator could, at the point where they initiate the
upgrade, symlink /usr/sbin/node -> /usr/sbin/, if they are
confident that *they* will never need to install the node.js package. Or
perhaps it could be handled by pre/postinst scripts, as you proposed for nodejs
in another message.


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Vincent Bernat]

OoO En  cette fin de nuit blanche  du vendredi 04 mai  2012, vers 06:11,
Hamish Moffatt  disait :

> Secondly if node.js is usually just used via #!, I'm not sure why it's in 
> $PATH at all - why not in /usr/lib?

Neither "#!/usr/bin/node" nor "#!/usr/bin/env  node" will work then.
-- 
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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Christian PERRIER]

Quoting Patrick Ouellette (poue...@debian.org):
> Can someone please explain to be why it is so unpalatable to
> have the Node.js package in the README and in an installation/
> configuration message include the following (or similar) message:

("last minute debconf addition hater" hat ON)

Please not not not not not in a debconf note. Debconf notes are
Evil..:-). 

If this is the way either package goes, please don't even consider
using debconf to "warn" users for that. NEWS.Debian is the place where
this should go. See debconf-devel(7) (where this is not /me talking
but Joey Hess)


I'm really not comfortable with the nodejs package virtually enforcing
the maintainers of node to deal with a transition. That's my rough
feeling after reading part of this thread. I think it is a very bad
idea (marketically speaking) to make ham radio users mad about Debian,
even if we have good reasons for that)



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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Hamish Moffatt]

On Thu, May 03, 2012 at 05:28:29PM -0400, Patrick Ouellette wrote:
> On Thu, May 03, 2012 at 05:13:09PM -0400, Chris Knadle wrote:
> > 
> > Drat.  I forgot about APRS. APRS has become fairly popular among hams, so 
> > much 
> > so that it now comes built-in to several radios, and even HTs 
> > (Handy-Talkies).
> > 
> > APRS is a system for location reporting.  It's also very commonly used to 
> > track experimental weather balloons at high altitudes, because apparently 
> > GPS 
> > stops working at around 30,000 feet.  [The original high-altitude MIT 
> > balloon 
> > launch that many others have duplicated uses APRS, and I know of other 
> > groups 
> > using it for this purpose also.]  APRS is also commonly used by hams to 
> > track 
> > themselves and/or their cars and loved ones as they drive around.
> > 
> > The rigs used in cars likely aren't running a Linux OS, but the base 
> > station 
> > nodes that receive and report the APRS traffic probably are, and as Debian 
> > has 
> > been friendly to hams it's one of the more likely to be used there.
> 
> Continue to say DRAT!  The handwriting is on the wall.  Very few have come
> out even marginally supporting the ham radio claim other than myself.
> 
> Frankly, given the lack of response from the Debian ham community I'm 
> inclined 
> to no longer maintain the ax25 packages and let them drop from Debian.
> 
> Three other people are listed as uploaders on ax25-apps: Jaime Robles,
> Hamish Moffatt, and Ramakrishnan Muthukrishnan.  I haven't heard from
> any of them.  Haven't heard from our QSSTV supporter either (Steve Kostecke).

Sorry Pat, I'm pretty much MIA and wasn't aware of this renewed
discussion until you Cced me.

I think it's pretty poor of the node.js developers to trample on an
established name, especially when "node" doesn't even seem to be
particularly descriptive of their application. 

Secondly if node.js is usually just used via #!, I'm not sure why it's in 
$PATH at all - why not in /usr/lib?

Nonetheless the numbers are against the ham radio case. I personally
haven't used (ax)node and I'm not able to confirm that these complicated
scenarios you mention exist. If we added a big preinst warning to
(ax)node with a chance to abort installation, would that be sufficient 
warning?

Ubuntu hasn't resolved this either FWIW. They probably have fewer
hamradio users than we do.

Hamish


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Patrick Ouellette]

On Thu, May 03, 2012 at 04:46:09PM -0500, Peter Samuelson wrote:
> Date: Thu, 3 May 2012 16:46:09 -0500
> From: Peter Samuelson 
> Subject: Re: Node.js and it's future in debian
> To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org, Patrick Ouellette ,
>  Andrew Starr-Bochicchio 
> 
> 
> [David Weinehall]
> > So...  A (admittedly expensive) pre-inst script that checks the
> > system for calls to /usr/sbin/node outside of Debian packages would
> > likely do the trick?
> 
> That seems like a pretty big violation of the spirit, and possibly the
> letter, of Debian Policy.
> 

I suspect he was suggesting a pre-inst script that scanned and identified
the files with /usr/sbin/node references so the sysadmin could update them.
That would not be any different in spirit than the script the checks your
system for the ability to move to dependency based init.

Pat


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Chris Knadle]

On Thursday, May 03, 2012 17:28:29, Patrick Ouellette wrote:
> On Thu, May 03, 2012 at 05:13:09PM -0400, Chris Knadle wrote:
> > Drat.  I forgot about APRS. APRS has become fairly popular among hams, so
> > much so that it now comes built-in to several radios, and even HTs
> > (Handy-Talkies).
> > 
> > APRS is a system for location reporting.  It's also very commonly used to
> > track experimental weather balloons at high altitudes, because apparently
> > GPS stops working at around 30,000 feet.  [The original high-altitude
> > MIT balloon launch that many others have duplicated uses APRS, and I
> > know of other groups using it for this purpose also.]  APRS is also
> > commonly used by hams to track themselves and/or their cars and loved
> > ones as they drive around.
> > 
> > The rigs used in cars likely aren't running a Linux OS, but the base
> > station nodes that receive and report the APRS traffic probably are, and
> > as Debian has been friendly to hams it's one of the more likely to be
> > used there.
> 
> Continue to say DRAT!  The handwriting is on the wall.  Very few have come
> out even marginally supporting the ham radio claim other than myself.

[reading you 20dB over s9.]

Something else I forgot about:  software defined radio.  i.e. it's possible 
that a Linux box *is* the radio.

73 and good computer DX.

  -- Chris KB2IQN

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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Peter Samuelson]

[David Weinehall]
> So...  A (admittedly expensive) pre-inst script that checks the
> system for calls to /usr/sbin/node outside of Debian packages would
> likely do the trick?

That seems like a pretty big violation of the spirit, and possibly the
letter, of Debian Policy.

I mean, why not just tell users "Yeah, if you install both of these
node packages, and you try to run node.js with /usr/sbin is in your
path, you might not get what you expected."  That violates the spirit
of Policy too, and it's a lot simpler.


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Patrick Ouellette]

On Thu, May 03, 2012 at 05:13:09PM -0400, Chris Knadle wrote:
> 
> Drat.  I forgot about APRS. APRS has become fairly popular among hams, so 
> much 
> so that it now comes built-in to several radios, and even HTs (Handy-Talkies).
> 
> APRS is a system for location reporting.  It's also very commonly used to 
> track experimental weather balloons at high altitudes, because apparently GPS 
> stops working at around 30,000 feet.  [The original high-altitude MIT balloon 
> launch that many others have duplicated uses APRS, and I know of other groups 
> using it for this purpose also.]  APRS is also commonly used by hams to track 
> themselves and/or their cars and loved ones as they drive around.
> 
> The rigs used in cars likely aren't running a Linux OS, but the base station 
> nodes that receive and report the APRS traffic probably are, and as Debian 
> has 
> been friendly to hams it's one of the more likely to be used there.
> 

Continue to say DRAT!  The handwriting is on the wall.  Very few have come
out even marginally supporting the ham radio claim other than myself.

Frankly, given the lack of response from the Debian ham community I'm inclined 
to no longer maintain the ax25 packages and let them drop from Debian.

Three other people are listed as uploaders on ax25-apps: Jaime Robles,
Hamish Moffatt, and Ramakrishnan Muthukrishnan.  I haven't heard from
any of them.  Haven't heard from our QSSTV supporter either (Steve Kostecke).


73,

Pat NE4PO


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Chris Knadle]

On Thursday, May 03, 2012 16:32:08, Patrick Ouellette wrote:
> On Thu, May 03, 2012 at 09:21:16PM +0100, Colin Tuckley wrote:
...
> > What you are also ignoring here is that AX25 packet is pretty much dead
> > in Ham radio.
> 
> No, I am not ignoring the ax25 packet status in ham radio.  When I posted
> to linux-hams I received a rapid response.  There has been a consistent
> trickle of kernel source patches for ax25 also.
> 
> Like all things ham radio, there is a significant difference in the number
> of people who participate in ax25 / packet depending on the area you
> are in.  APRS is fairly common in the metropolitan areas of the USA.  APRS
> uses UI ax25 frames.  It is not infrequent to find the same location
> running a APRS digipeater and a PBBS.  There is a coordinated effort in
> the state of Virginia to use ax25 as a part of the disaster communications
> plan (http://www.vden.org/).

Drat.  I forgot about APRS. APRS has become fairly popular among hams, so much 
so that it now comes built-in to several radios, and even HTs (Handy-Talkies).

APRS is a system for location reporting.  It's also very commonly used to 
track experimental weather balloons at high altitudes, because apparently GPS 
stops working at around 30,000 feet.  [The original high-altitude MIT balloon 
launch that many others have duplicated uses APRS, and I know of other groups 
using it for this purpose also.]  APRS is also commonly used by hams to track 
themselves and/or their cars and loved ones as they drive around.

The rigs used in cars likely aren't running a Linux OS, but the base station 
nodes that receive and report the APRS traffic probably are, and as Debian has 
been friendly to hams it's one of the more likely to be used there.

  -- Chris, KB2IQN

--
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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[David Weinehall]

On Thu, May 03, 2012 at 03:34:59PM -0400, Patrick Ouellette wrote:
> On Thu, May 03, 2012 at 03:09:42PM -0400, Andrew Starr-Bochicchio wrote:
> > 
> > It has been said many times that the impact on users will be limited
> > as node is not meant to be called directly but by inetd. You and other
> > members of the ham radio community seem to feel that there would be an
> > impact on its users. Perhaps pointing to some specific use cases that
> > will be impacted would help the rest of us understand the issues your
> > user would face?
> > 
> > Apologies if you've covered this elsewhere (I've read this thread but
> > not all of the past ones).
> > 
> 
> >From the linux-hams list:
> 
> "From my experience, many MANY Linux hams have customized scripts that
> startup some very elaborate HAM systems.  For many, these scripts
> weren't written by them and the changing of the node command could be
> very difficult for some.  The other aspect is if this change came into
> a package update that could impact production systems in VERY remote
> sites.  This could cause all kinds ugliness that can be easily
> avoided."
> 
> 
> >From the ax25-HOWTO (http://tldp.org/HOWTO/AX25-HOWTO/x1688.html):
> 
> "The node would normally be invoked from the ax25d program although it 
> is also capable of being invoked from the TCP/IP inetd program to allow 
> users to telnet to your machine and obtain access to it, or by running 
> it from the command line."
> 
> 
> In practice, node is called from inetd, ax25d, scripts, and from the command
> line directly depending on the need and circumstance.  
> 
> 
> I have stated elsewhere in the threads, there can be significant challenges 
> to physically access the ham radio machines if the transition breaks the
> system.  If the ham radio node has to change, the change must be bulletproof
> to the greatest extent possible.  A failed upgrade may deprive a region
> of emergency communications capability until the problem is resolved.
> 
> 
> Ironically one of the reasons many hams looked to Debian was the stability
> of the system and the ability to upgrade in place.  Changing a core ham
> radio component throws those reasons out the window.
> 

So...  A (admittedly expensive) pre-inst script that checks the system
for calls to /usr/sbin/node outside of Debian packages would likely do
the trick?


Regards: David
-- 
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//  ~   //  Diamond-white roses of fire //
\)  http://www.acc.umu.se/~tao/(/   Beautiful hoar-frost   (/


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Patrick Ouellette]

On Thu, May 03, 2012 at 03:09:42PM -0400, Andrew Starr-Bochicchio wrote:
> 
> It has been said many times that the impact on users will be limited
> as node is not meant to be called directly but by inetd. You and other
> members of the ham radio community seem to feel that there would be an
> impact on its users. Perhaps pointing to some specific use cases that
> will be impacted would help the rest of us understand the issues your
> user would face?
> 
> Apologies if you've covered this elsewhere (I've read this thread but
> not all of the past ones).
> 

>From the linux-hams list:

"From my experience, many MANY Linux hams have customized scripts that
startup some very elaborate HAM systems.  For many, these scripts
weren't written by them and the changing of the node command could be
very difficult for some.  The other aspect is if this change came into
a package update that could impact production systems in VERY remote
sites.  This could cause all kinds ugliness that can be easily
avoided."


>From the ax25-HOWTO (http://tldp.org/HOWTO/AX25-HOWTO/x1688.html):

"The node would normally be invoked from the ax25d program although it 
is also capable of being invoked from the TCP/IP inetd program to allow 
users to telnet to your machine and obtain access to it, or by running 
it from the command line."


In practice, node is called from inetd, ax25d, scripts, and from the command
line directly depending on the need and circumstance.  


I have stated elsewhere in the threads, there can be significant challenges 
to physically access the ham radio machines if the transition breaks the
system.  If the ham radio node has to change, the change must be bulletproof
to the greatest extent possible.  A failed upgrade may deprive a region
of emergency communications capability until the problem is resolved.


Ironically one of the reasons many hams looked to Debian was the stability
of the system and the ability to upgrade in place.  Changing a core ham
radio component throws those reasons out the window.



Pat


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Patrick Ouellette]

On Thu, May 03, 2012 at 09:21:16PM +0100, Colin Tuckley wrote:
> Date: Thu, 03 May 2012 21:21:16 +0100
> From: Colin Tuckley 
> Subject:  Re: Node.js and it's future in debian
> To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org
> 
> On 03/05/12 20:44, Patrick Ouellette wrote:
> 
> > With all due respect, you can make the same argument for the Node.js
> > package to do this.  Node.js is not currently in the stable distribution
> > while node is (apparently this does not have any bearing on the discussion).
> 
> node might be in stable but it has less than 100 installs of which about
> *20* are currently shown as "vote" meaning they are active.
> 

Popcorn requires a connection to the internet to get statistics.  If the
machine is not normally connected to the internet, the stats are not reported.

> What you are also ignoring here is that AX25 packet is pretty much dead
> in Ham radio.
> 

No, I am not ignoring the ax25 packet status in ham radio.  When I posted to
linux-hams I received a rapid response.  There has been a consistent trickle
of kernel source patches for ax25 also.

Like all things ham radio, there is a significant difference in the number
of people who participate in ax25 / packet depending on the area you
are in.  APRS is fairly common in the metropolitan areas of the USA.  APRS
uses UI ax25 frames.  It is not infrequent to find the same location running
a APRS digipeater and a PBBS.  There is a coordinated effort in the state of
Virginia to use ax25 as a part of the disaster communications plan 
(http://www.vden.org/).


Pat NE4PO


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Colin Tuckley]

On 03/05/12 20:44, Patrick Ouellette wrote:

> With all due respect, you can make the same argument for the Node.js
> package to do this.  Node.js is not currently in the stable distribution
> while node is (apparently this does not have any bearing on the discussion).

node might be in stable but it has less than 100 installs of which about
*20* are currently shown as "vote" meaning they are active.

What you are also ignoring here is that AX25 packet is pretty much dead
in Ham radio.

Colin (G8TMV)

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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Patrick Ouellette]

On Thu, May 03, 2012 at 10:11:41PM +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> 
> > You also don't address the issue of a user who installs both packages
> > and now gets varying behavior depending on their $PATH - a result not
> > of a local administrator's action, but of the Debian package's actions.
> 
> If node gets renamed to ax25-node, the conflict will disappear, no?

Not if your backwards compatibility symlink is there.


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Raphael Hertzog]

On Thu, 03 May 2012, Patrick Ouellette wrote:
> With all due respect, you can make the same argument for the Node.js
> package to do this.

Yes, but it would not be a transitional backward-compatibility symlink. It
would be a symlink that would have to remain forever and that is required
even for new installs.

As many have argued, the usage patterns of both programs are different
and it will be generally less disruptive to transition ham radio node
users than to require all node.js users to setup the symlink if they want
to be able to use the official shebang line (or the code that someone
else developed for them on a non-Debian system, etc.).

> You also don't address the issue of a user who installs both packages
> and now gets varying behavior depending on their $PATH - a result not
> of a local administrator's action, but of the Debian package's actions.

If node gets renamed to ax25-node, the conflict will disappear, no?

In any case, once the conflict has been resolved at the package level (for
new installations), I believe that nodejs's "preinst install" script could
check if there's a /usr/sbin/node which is in conflict and refuse to
install until the administrator has cleaned up the situation (the error
message could point to /usr/share/doc/node/README.Debian for instructions
on how to do this while ensuring that nothing breaks).

This check logically gives priority to the current node package since it
was there before.

In the unlikely case where both packages were already present in the past,
then it should just print out a fat warning and not fail.

HTH.

Cheers,
-- 
Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer

Pre-order a copy of the Debian Administrator's Handbook and help
liberate it: http://debian-handbook.info/liberation/


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Patrick Ouellette]

On Thu, May 03, 2012 at 09:24:00PM +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> 
> So to avoid disruptions, you rename the binary in the package and in the
> "postinst configure " which is run during upgrade, you add a
> symlink from /usr/sbin/node to ax25-node and you display a prominent
> warning explaining that the binary name has changed but that you left a
> (non-packaged) symlink in the mean time.
> 
> For new installs, as opposed to upgrades, you obviously don't install the
> compatibility symlink.
> 
> I really don't understand what's so complicated about all this. With a
> clear note in README.Debian and NEWS.Debian, ham radio users will not
> suffer.
> 

With all due respect, you can make the same argument for the Node.js
package to do this.  Node.js is not currently in the stable distribution
while node is (apparently this does not have any bearing on the discussion).

Until a solution is implemented and tested in a variety of cases I would
not claim the user will not suffer.

You also don't address the issue of a user who installs both packages
and now gets varying behavior depending on their $PATH - a result not
of a local administrator's action, but of the Debian package's actions.

Pat


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Patrick Ouellette]

Can someone please explain to be why it is so unpalatable to
have the Node.js package in the README and in an installation/
configuration message include the following (or similar) message:

Node.js in Debian has the executable name /usr/bin/nodejs
This is to solve a conflict with a package that still exists in Debian
from a time before Node.js.  If you are not going to use the other package,
and wish to maintain compatibility with the upstream Node.js documentation,
tutorials, scripts, etc. please run the following command as an administrator:

ln -s /usr/bin/nodejs /usr/bin/node



Thanks,

Pat


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Vincent Bernat]

OoO En  ce début  de soirée du  jeudi 03  mai 2012, vers  21:11, Patrick
Ouellette  disait :

>> Yes, they are. But we need to  find a solution that will work for almost
>> every one and this solution seems to exist.
>> 

> Can you please elaborate on the solution that seems to exist?  All I have
> seen is a demand from Node.js to give up the name ASAP.  

Yes, this one (with the patch to rename the binary in your package).

> "From my experience, many MANY Linux hams have customized scripts that
> startup some very elaborate HAM systems.  For many, these scripts
> weren't written by them and the changing of the node command could be
> very difficult for some.  The other aspect is if this change came into
> a package update that could impact production systems in VERY remote
> sites.  This could cause all kinds ugliness that can be easily
> avoided."

Being not a ham radio user, I  find a bit dubious the above quote ("many
MANY" and  "customized scripts").  Out of 100  users, how much  is "many
MANY"? If it is 1 out of 100, well, that's not that much. They can still
put a symlink  (out of /usr/local/bin for example).  The difference with
node.js is that all users would have to put this link.
-- 
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Make input easy to prepare and output self-explanatory.
- The Elements of Programming Style (Kernighan & Plauger)


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Raphael Hertzog]

Hi,

On Thu, 03 May 2012, Patrick Ouellette wrote:
> This is from the linux-hams list where I asked about changing the name of 
> node:
> 
> "From my experience, many MANY Linux hams have customized scripts that
> startup some very elaborate HAM systems.  For many, these scripts
> weren't written by them and the changing of the node command could be
> very difficult for some.  The other aspect is if this change came into
> a package update that could impact production systems in VERY remote
> sites.  This could cause all kinds ugliness that can be easily
> avoided."

So to avoid disruptions, you rename the binary in the package and in the
"postinst configure " which is run during upgrade, you add a
symlink from /usr/sbin/node to ax25-node and you display a prominent
warning explaining that the binary name has changed but that you left a
(non-packaged) symlink in the mean time.

For new installs, as opposed to upgrades, you obviously don't install the
compatibility symlink.

I really don't understand what's so complicated about all this. With a
clear note in README.Debian and NEWS.Debian, ham radio users will not
suffer.

Cheers,
-- 
Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer

Pre-order a copy of the Debian Administrator's Handbook and help
liberate it: http://debian-handbook.info/liberation/


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Patrick Ouellette]

On Thu, May 03, 2012 at 08:48:07PM +0200, Vincent Bernat wrote:
> OoO Pendant le repas du jeudi 03 mai 2012, vers 19:35, Patrick Ouellette
>  disait :
> 
> >> As said many times, node is an interpreter used in shebang. Using a
> >> different name would just upset its user base. Debian will be seen,
> >> again, as the one harming a community, like this may happen in the
> >> Ruby community because of lack of understanding on how we work.
> >> Outside of Debian, nobody will understand why a package related to
> >> HAM radio hinders the use of one of the trendiest package (in the
> >> top 5 of most watched and forked repository in GitHub).
> 
> > So every time something is the hot new trend it has the right to usurp
> > an established package's binary namespace?  I'm not asking this to be
> > argumentative, I really want to know if this is your intention.
> 
> Not  the right  but  this is  a  strong criteria  to  "hijack" a  binary
> name. The second  strong criteria is the absolute  necessity for node.js
> executable to be named "node" since it is used as a shebang.
> 

OK, so in your mind the hot new item (that maybe unused in a couple
of years when the next new thing comes along) has a strong argument
to hijack a binary name simply because it is "hot" at the time.  Certainly
you are entitled to your opinion.  We'll have to agree to disagree on
this particular criteria.

I still don't get the importance of the shebang argument.  Scripts
are text files, like conf files and can be modified.  While definitely
not an ideal situation, replacing the shebang line can be pretty easily 
scripted.  It is the very first line of the script.
(yes, constantly having to run the script for *every* new
script downloaded from the prolific websphere can be a burden)

Changing conf files always requires manual intervention to preserve
any local changes.

> >> We are building a distribution for users. There are far more users
> >> of node.js than there is for node. Plus the fact that the proposed
> >> change will be absolutely invisible to most users of the "node"
> >> package.
> 
> > The ham radio community is also our users.  In fact, one of Debian's early
> > focus areas was amateur radio software (see Bruce Perens' history in Debian 
> > -
> > he wanted to have a distribution that included the ham radio software and
> > tools).
> 
> Yes, they are. But we need to  find a solution that will work for almost
> every one and this solution seems to exist.
> 

Can you please elaborate on the solution that seems to exist?  All I have
seen is a demand from Node.js to give up the name ASAP.  

> > Are you a ham radio user of node?   You can not make assertions that the
> > change will be "absolutely invisible to most users" if you have zero
> > experience with the community that uses the package.  The fact is it will
> > break machines  that have been in  service for possibly as  long as 13
> > years.
> 
> I am not  a ham radio user at  all. I base my writings on  what has been
> said by others (who may not  be ham radio users either): "node" is meant
> to be called through inetd which is configured by a conffile that can be
> updated. This is a pity to do the change but it seems to be invisible to
> most  users and  easy for  the almost  the rest  of them  (they  will be
> prompted  for  the  configuration  change  if  they  have  modified  the
> configuration file of inetd in the past).

This is from the linux-hams list where I asked about changing the name of node:

"From my experience, many MANY Linux hams have customized scripts that
startup some very elaborate HAM systems.  For many, these scripts
weren't written by them and the changing of the node command could be
very difficult for some.  The other aspect is if this change came into
a package update that could impact production systems in VERY remote
sites.  This could cause all kinds ugliness that can be easily
avoided."

Thanks,

Pat
-- 
,-.
> Patrick Ouellette   |  While you are proclaiming peace with your lips,  <
> pat(at)flying-gecko.net |  be careful to have it even more fully in your<
> Amateur Radio: NE4PO|  heart.  -- Francis of Assisi <
`-'


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Andrew Starr-Bochicchio]

On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 2:26 PM, Patrick Ouellette  wrote:
> Please understand, it is not a "reluctance to undergo this transition."
> I am being asked to make Debian incompatible with the previous 13 years
> of functionality, and cause a significant impact on a user community.
> This is not something that should be done lightly or without considerable
> thought and preparation.  The first part of that process is convincing
> me and the ham community (e.g. upstream) that the necessity of the change
> is real, and the benefits outweigh the costs.

It has been said many times that the impact on users will be limited
as node is not meant to be called directly but by inetd. You and other
members of the ham radio community seem to feel that there would be an
impact on its users. Perhaps pointing to some specific use cases that
will be impacted would help the rest of us understand the issues your
user would face?

Apologies if you've covered this elsewhere (I've read this thread but
not all of the past ones).

Thanks!

-- Andrew Starr-Bochicchio

   Ubuntu Developer 
   Debian Maintainer

   PGP/GPG Key ID: D53FDCB1


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Vincent Bernat]

OoO Pendant le repas du jeudi 03 mai 2012, vers 19:35, Patrick Ouellette
 disait :

>> As said many times, node is an interpreter used in shebang. Using a
>> different name would just upset its user base. Debian will be seen,
>> again, as the one harming a community, like this may happen in the
>> Ruby community because of lack of understanding on how we work.
>> Outside of Debian, nobody will understand why a package related to
>> HAM radio hinders the use of one of the trendiest package (in the
>> top 5 of most watched and forked repository in GitHub).

> So every time something is the hot new trend it has the right to usurp
> an established package's binary namespace?  I'm not asking this to be
> argumentative, I really want to know if this is your intention.

Not  the right  but  this is  a  strong criteria  to  "hijack" a  binary
name. The second  strong criteria is the absolute  necessity for node.js
executable to be named "node" since it is used as a shebang.

> I'm not saying there is a perpetual right to a name either, but when
> a package has active users, has been in the distribution a long time,
> and still does what it is designed to do there should be some significant
> consideration given to protecting that package's name space.

I agree. But, this should not eclipse other aspects.

>> We are building a distribution for users. There are far more users
>> of node.js than there is for node. Plus the fact that the proposed
>> change will be absolutely invisible to most users of the "node"
>> package.

> The ham radio community is also our users.  In fact, one of Debian's early
> focus areas was amateur radio software (see Bruce Perens' history in Debian -
> he wanted to have a distribution that included the ham radio software and
> tools).

Yes, they are. But we need to  find a solution that will work for almost
every one and this solution seems to exist.

> Are you a ham radio user of node?   You can not make assertions that the
> change will be "absolutely invisible to most users" if you have zero
> experience with the community that uses the package.  The fact is it will
> break machines  that have been in  service for possibly as  long as 13
> years.

I am not  a ham radio user at  all. I base my writings on  what has been
said by others (who may not  be ham radio users either): "node" is meant
to be called through inetd which is configured by a conffile that can be
updated. This is a pity to do the change but it seems to be invisible to
most  users and  easy for  the almost  the rest  of them  (they  will be
prompted  for  the  configuration  change  if  they  have  modified  the
configuration file of inetd in the past).
-- 
Vincent Bernat ☯ http://vincent.bernat.im

Take care to branch the right way on equality.
- The Elements of Programming Style (Kernighan & Plauger)


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Patrick Ouellette]

On Thu, May 03, 2012 at 02:35:06PM -0300, Fernando Lemos wrote:
> 
> So while I don't think decisions shouldn't be taken based solely on
> popcon stats, I think it would be silly to think that ham radio would
> be more popular than node.js. I understand you're reluctant to undergo
> this transition and I empathize, but this argument is really a long
> shot.

There are several issues, apparently none of which apply including but
not limited to :

length of time a package has been in Debian

the fact the package is still viable and in use by a not insignificant
number of people

the fact that the Node.js maintainers previously asked the node maintainer 
to change the package name and he refused

the fact the Node.js maintainers knowing policy violations would happen
willfully released their package to Debian with the policy violations
apparently to force just this situation and usurp the namespace
(or at the very least in an attempt to circumvent policy)


Please understand, it is not a "reluctance to undergo this transition."
I am being asked to make Debian incompatible with the previous 13 years
of functionality, and cause a significant impact on a user community.
This is not something that should be done lightly or without considerable
thought and preparation.  The first part of that process is convincing
me and the ham community (e.g. upstream) that the necessity of the change 
is real, and the benefits outweigh the costs.

One of the considerable costs involves the number of systems in place in
the ham community that are not easily physically accessible should the
upgrade/change break the system.  These systems may be on mountain tops,
high buildings, or other high structures with significant challenges
to accessing the locations.  These systems may be (usually are) part
of emergency communications plans and are relied on to help in the
event of a disaster.

Pat


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Matt Zagrabelny]

On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 12:35 PM, Patrick Ouellette  wrote:
> On Thu, May 03, 2012 at 01:10:24PM +0200, Vincent Bernat wrote:
>>
>> As said many times, node is an interpreter used in shebang. Using a
>> different name would just upset its user base. Debian will be seen,
>> again, as the one harming a community, like this may happen in the
>> Ruby community because of lack of understanding on how we work.
>> Outside of Debian, nobody will understand why a package related to
>> HAM radio hinders the use of one of the trendiest package (in the
>> top 5 of most watched and forked repository in GitHub).
>
> So every time something is the hot new trend it has the right to usurp
> an established package's binary namespace?  I'm not asking this to be
> argumentative, I really want to know if this is your intention.

Not speaking for Vincent, here is my take:

A namespace is something that is distinctive and specific. "Node" is
neither. As it stands, it is foolish for both projects to use such
name(s).

All that being said, it would be nice to come to a "good" (or the
"best" possible) solution. Those are subjective terms and that is why
the arguments are revolving around popularity, ease of transitions,
and the "best" interests for (the majority of) Debian's users.

-mz


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Carl Fürstenberg]

On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 7:40 PM, Russ Allbery  wrote:
>
> The first part I shouldn't have said, since it's really a distraction.
> I'm sorry about that.
>
> For the second, that's what the documentation of the binary says, as
> previously posted to this thread.  Is that not the case?
>
> Relative numbers really isn't the point, and I'm sorry I distracted us all
> with that.  The point is that the node documentation says that it's meant
> to be run via inetd, and that's a fairly easy thing to update in a
> postinst in a transitional package and be done with it.  The popularity
> question is whether Node.js is widely-enough used to warrant the effort,
> and I'm fairly sure that's the case based on discussion in Communications
> of the ACM articles, professional discussions with colleagues, etc.  Not
> to mention that the popcon count for the nodejs package is getting fairly
> strong (stronger than nearly all the packages I maintain, that's for
> sure).
>
>
> That certainly isn't true any more.  nodejs now has almost ten times as
> many users reporting in popcon as node.
>

I can add that I think there are plenty of people who have been forced
to install nodejs from source onto stable systems due to the lack of
packages (I had to do that myself for a project recently)


-- 
Carl Fürstenberg


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Russ Allbery]

Patrick Ouellette  writes:
> On Tue, May 01, 2012 at 03:00:46PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:

>> That community is much smaller, and the binary isn't invoked directly
>> by users, which makes the impact fairly minimal in practice.

> Can you support that assertion with data?

The first part I shouldn't have said, since it's really a distraction.
I'm sorry about that.

For the second, that's what the documentation of the binary says, as
previously posted to this thread.  Is that not the case?

> How many people use Node.js?  I had never heard of it until this came
> up, and I work in IT with web development teams.

Relative numbers really isn't the point, and I'm sorry I distracted us all
with that.  The point is that the node documentation says that it's meant
to be run via inetd, and that's a fairly easy thing to update in a
postinst in a transitional package and be done with it.  The popularity
question is whether Node.js is widely-enough used to warrant the effort,
and I'm fairly sure that's the case based on discussion in Communications
of the ACM articles, professional discussions with colleagues, etc.  Not
to mention that the popcon count for the nodejs package is getting fairly
strong (stronger than nearly all the packages I maintain, that's for
sure).

> FWIW, the bug log from Node.js when they examined the Debian
> installations of each found them to be a similar number as reported by
> popcorn.

That certainly isn't true any more.  nodejs now has almost ten times as
many users reporting in popcon as node.

-- 
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org)   


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Patrick Ouellette]

On Thu, May 03, 2012 at 01:10:24PM +0200, Vincent Bernat wrote:
> 
> As said many times, node is an interpreter used in shebang. Using a
> different name would just upset its user base. Debian will be seen,
> again, as the one harming a community, like this may happen in the
> Ruby community because of lack of understanding on how we work.
> Outside of Debian, nobody will understand why a package related to
> HAM radio hinders the use of one of the trendiest package (in the
> top 5 of most watched and forked repository in GitHub).

So every time something is the hot new trend it has the right to usurp
an established package's binary namespace?  I'm not asking this to be
argumentative, I really want to know if this is your intention.

I'm not saying there is a perpetual right to a name either, but when
a package has active users, has been in the distribution a long time,
and still does what it is designed to do there should be some significant
consideration given to protecting that package's name space.

> 
> We are building a distribution for users. There are far more users
> of node.js than there is for node. Plus the fact that the proposed
> change will be absolutely invisible to most users of the "node"
> package.

The ham radio community is also our users.  In fact, one of Debian's early
focus areas was amateur radio software (see Bruce Perens' history in Debian -
he wanted to have a distribution that included the ham radio software and
tools).

Are you a ham radio user of node?   You can not make assertions that the
change will be "absolutely invisible to most users" if you have zero
experience with the community that uses the package.  The fact is it will
break machines that have been in service for possibly as long as 13 years.


Pat


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Fernando Lemos]

Hi,

On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 2:22 PM, Patrick Ouellette  wrote:
> I can find numbers of potential node users by examining the number of
> active amateur radio licenses and make educated guesses as to how many
> may be using the ham radio node software as either a user of the system
> or a system provider/administrator.
>
> FWIW, the bug log from Node.js when they examined the Debian installations
> of each found them to be a similar number as reported by popcorn.  (N.B.
> I don't put much stock in popcorn's numbers because it can be opted out of)

I don't think anyone is trying to imply that popcon is a *reliable*
source of information on how many people are using a certain package.
But the difference is striking, the nodejs package is at least 7 or 8
times more popular according to popcon. It would be very hard to
believe that nodejs is not more popular than node package. There are
also other ways to measure nodejs's popularity. For instance, Google
returns less than 20 million results for ham radio, and almost 60
million results for node.js.

So while I don't think decisions shouldn't be taken based solely on
popcon stats, I think it would be silly to think that ham radio would
be more popular than node.js. I understand you're reluctant to undergo
this transition and I empathize, but this argument is really a long
shot.

Regards,


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Patrick Ouellette]

On Tue, May 01, 2012 at 03:00:46PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> 
> That community is much smaller, and the binary isn't invoked directly by
> users, which makes the impact fairly minimal in practice.
> 

Can you support that assertion with data?  I'm not talking installed
instances in Debian, but in the overall world community?  How many
people use Node.js?  I had never heard of it until this came up,
and I work in IT with web development teams.

I can find numbers of potential node users by examining the number of
active amateur radio licenses and make educated guesses as to how many
may be using the ham radio node software as either a user of the system
or a system provider/administrator.

FWIW, the bug log from Node.js when they examined the Debian installations
of each found them to be a similar number as reported by popcorn.  (N.B.
I don't put much stock in popcorn's numbers because it can be opted out of)


Pat


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Patrick Ouellette]

On Thu, May 03, 2012 at 09:08:23AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> 
> Thomas Goirand  writes:
> > On 05/02/2012 06:00 AM, Russ Allbery wrote:
> 
> >> and the binary isn't invoked directly by users
> 
> > If the binary isn't invoked directly by the users, why do we have a
> > problem? Why can't a patch be introduced so that the binary doesn't live
> > in a user accessible path (eg: not in /usr/bin)?
> 
> That's also an option, but the amount of work required to do the
> transition is basically the same either way, and in Debian usually
> programs meant to be invoked by inetd are kept in /usr/sbin.
> 

The ham radio node command IS already in /usr/sbin
This does not stop people from writing scripts that invoke it, nor
stop them from invoking it on the command line.

Node.js' node IS already in /usr/bin

Pat


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Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Joey Hess]

Charles Plessy wrote:
> If we would tolerate conflicts, we would not support the parallel use of some
> of our packages, but there would be the benefit that the package dependancy
> graph could be parsed to report clusters of mutually-incompatible packages.
> Often, these incompatibilities will not correspond to use cases, as there is 
> an
> obvious selection pressure upstream to avoid conflicts with other programs 
> that
> are directlyqused in combination with the upstream work.

Consider a package that contains a node.js script, which is not the
primary purpose of the package. So it Recommends, rather than depends
on nodejs. (Let's assume it uses #!/usr/bin/env node, and for the sake
of example is something root might run, so /usr/sbin could be in PATH.)

Using Conflicts makes this script behave very unfortunatly in certian
circumstances. If some third package came along and added another node
binary, and conflicted with node.js, we would probably call that package
RC buggy, as it breaks unrelated software. So, having conflicting
packages of this sort makes using Recommends, or even Suggests, a
minefield, and should be avoided.

-- 
see shy jo


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Russ Allbery]

Thomas Goirand  writes:
> On 05/02/2012 06:00 AM, Russ Allbery wrote:

>> and the binary isn't invoked directly by users

> If the binary isn't invoked directly by the users, why do we have a
> problem? Why can't a patch be introduced so that the binary doesn't live
> in a user accessible path (eg: not in /usr/bin)?

That's also an option, but the amount of work required to do the
transition is basically the same either way, and in Debian usually
programs meant to be invoked by inetd are kept in /usr/sbin.

-- 
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org)   


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Russ Allbery]

Bernd Zeimetz  writes:

> If one of the maintainers disagrees with a solution you did not come to
> a consensus.

No, this is not true.  Consensus does not mean unanimity, and the Policy
dictate is (in my opinion with my Policy delegate hat on) referring to a
consensus of the project, not a consensus of the maintainers.

-- 
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org)   


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Thomas Goirand]

On 05/02/2012 06:00 AM, Russ Allbery wrote:
> and the binary isn't invoked directly by
> users
If the binary isn't invoked directly by the users,
why do we have a problem? Why can't a patch be
introduced so that the binary doesn't live in a
user accessible path (eg: not in /usr/bin)?

Thomas


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Vincent Bernat]

Le 03.05.2012 09:19, Bernd Zeimetz a écrit :

On 05/01/2012 11:32 PM, Jonathan Nieder wrote:


Sorry, I don't understand the above sentence.  Do you mean that it 
is

impossible to come to a consensus when one maintainer of a relevant
package disagrees?  I can understand that claim, but it doesn't seem
to be the same as the sentence above.


If one of the maintainers disagrees with a solution you did not come 
to

a consensus. Yes. And the policy has an easy solution for that:

10.1 Binaries
The maintainers should report this to the debian-devel mailing list 
and
try to find a consensus about which program will have to be renamed. 
If

a consensus cannot be reached, both programs must be renamed.


And this is - looking at this way too long thread - the best solution
for this issue imho.


As said many times, node is an interpreter used in shebang. Using a 
different name would just upset its user base. Debian will be seen, 
again, as the one harming a community, like this may happen in the Ruby 
community because of lack of understanding on how we work. Outside of 
Debian, nobody will understand why a package related to HAM radio 
hinders the use of one of the trendiest package (in the top 5 of most 
watched and forked repository in GitHub).


We are building a distribution for users. There are far more users of 
node.js than there is for node. Plus the fact that the proposed change 
will be absolutely invisible to most users of the "node" package.



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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Bernd Zeimetz]

On 05/01/2012 11:32 PM, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
> Steve Langasek wrote:
>> On Tue, May 01, 2012 at 03:30:50PM -0500, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
> 
>>> Wait, really?  What happened to respect by maintainers for the
>>> project?
>>
>> "The project" is not "a set of random maintainers who have a filename
>> conflict with you".
> 
> Sorry, I don't understand the above sentence.  Do you mean that it is
> impossible to come to a consensus when one maintainer of a relevant
> package disagrees?  I can understand that claim, but it doesn't seem
> to be the same as the sentence above.

If one of the maintainers disagrees with a solution you did not come to
a consensus. Yes. And the policy has an easy solution for that:

10.1 Binaries
The maintainers should report this to the debian-devel mailing list and
try to find a consensus about which program will have to be renamed. If
a consensus cannot be reached, both programs must be renamed.


And this is - looking at this way too long thread - the best solution
for this issue imho.


-- 
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Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Charles Plessy]

Hi all,

I think that we are asking the impossible, to be universal, cover a large
number of fields, and fit all of this in a single name space witout conflicts.

With our current approach, to rename at least one of the program names, we make
Debian systems incompatible with outside documentation and scripts, and one of
the drawbacks of this approach is that there is no easy way to mechanically
discover and report to the user which programs have been renamed compared to
their original upstream distribution.

If we would tolerate conflicts, we would not support the parallel use of some
of our packages, but there would be the benefit that the package dependancy
graph could be parsed to report clusters of mutually-incompatible packages.
Often, these incompatibilities will not correspond to use cases, as there is an
obvious selection pressure upstream to avoid conflicts with other programs that
are directlyqused in combination with the upstream work.

A third solution is possible (and of course requires work), it would be to
implement namespaces in a similar way to the alternative system.  Packages
competing for a program name would have the original upstream name in one
namespace, and leave it to the other package(s) in other namespaces.

Lastly, I just read Fedora's page about packaging conflicts, and noted
that among the recommendations, there is a suggestion to coordinate
with the other distributions in case of renaming.  

  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Conflicts#Approaching_Upstream

Perhaps it would be usefult to see what they would think of renaming the ham
radio 'node' (it looks like currently the renamed program is the one of the
draft node.js package).

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=815018

Cheers,

-- 
Charles Plessy
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan


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Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Patrick Ouellette]

On Wed, May 02, 2012 at 06:43:04PM +0100, Neil Williams wrote:
> 
> There's also http://packages.debian.org/#search_contents which can
> search for files listed within packages.
> 

That's where I check.

Pat
-- 
,-.
>  Patrick Ouellette|  No one is to be called an enemy, all are your  <
>  pat(at)flying-gecko.net  |  benefactors, and no one does you harm. <
>  Amateur Radio: NE4PO |  You have no enemy except yourselves.   <
>   |  -- Francis of Assisi   <
`-'


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Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Patrick Ouellette]

On Tue, May 01, 2012 at 08:22:05PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> 
> Maybe we should short-circuit this part of the conversation, since it
> doesn't sound like you're horribly interested in agreeing to change the
> name of node in the existing package.  :)
> 

Actually, despite my vigorous defense of the ham radio use of node as
a binary name, I am not adverse to renaming it provided it can be done
in a manner that minimally disrupts the users.

I believe the Node.js people need to help since they are the "late comers"
and their upstream seems to be the issue, and they ignored policy at their
peril to force the issue.

I'm more than a bit disappointed that this will be the second time a ham radio
tool in Debian is forced to use a name the wider Linux ham community does not
use.  No one seems to be considering the issues or complications caused to the
ham users.  I've heard the assertion that the ham users are a "smaller"
community, but I have not seen the numbers.  It seems the issue has come down
to a popularity contest, and since the Node.js folks don't understand ham 
radio the ham radio people will be made to bear the burden of the change.


> I think it would make sense to take this to the Technical Committee at
> this point and just make a decision, unless anyone thinks something
> substantially new is likely to turn up.  (We should probably give it a few
> more days to see if anything does, but it's feeling increasingly unlikely
> to me, as is the idea that we're all going to reach a consensus.)
> 

I forwarded the message proposing the Node.js people step up with a migration
plan and code to transition the ham radio package to the linux-hams list.
It usually takes a few days to get any substantive comments on that list.


Pat
-- 
,-.
> Patrick Ouellette|  It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless  <
> pat(at)flying-gecko.net  |  our walking is our preaching.   <
> Amateur Radio: NE4PO |  -- Francis of Assisi<
`-'


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Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Russ Allbery]

Patrick Ouellette  writes:

> I'm more than a bit disappointed that this will be the second time a ham
> radio tool in Debian is forced to use a name the wider Linux ham
> community does not use.  No one seems to be considering the issues or
> complications caused to the ham users.  I've heard the assertion that
> the ham users are a "smaller" community, but I have not seen the
> numbers.  It seems the issue has come down to a popularity contest, and
> since the Node.js folks don't understand ham radio the ham radio people
> will be made to bear the burden of the change.

Speaking solely for myself, the primary reason why it seems reasonable to
me to just rename the ham radio node program is that it's in /usr/sbin and
not meant to be regularly run directly by users, but rather to be
configured once and then largely left alone.  That means that coping with
a non-standard name is quite a bit easier than with a program that's meant
to be run regularly by end users.

The place where the popularity comes into play for me is in weighing the
impact on our users for calling the Node.js node program something else.
My *default* opinion, when there's a package already in Debian and another
comes along with a binary with the same name, is to just shrug and say
"first come, first serve" and tell the second group to call their program
something different.  It's the popularity and the expectations of our
users that in this case I think warrant looking further into other
possible solutions.  But I wouldn't extend that to say that the ham radio
folks should obviously "lose."

If the ham radio node program were also a user interface routinely used by
end users instead of used as part of system configuration, this would be a
much harder discussion.  Thankfully, that doesn't appear to be the case.

-- 
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org)   


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Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Jon Dowland]

On Wed, May 02, 2012 at 05:53:54PM +0100, Wookey wrote:
> Just a quick question - is there an easy way to do this? I worry
> sometimes that I might be creating a binary name that is already used
> somewhere, and thus a potential clash, but it is not obvious to me how
> to check. Strictly this applies to every file in a package, although
> clashes are most likely in /usr/bin

I wonder if there's any mileage in a lintian check against e.g. a local apt-file
cache (removing files belonging to a package binary name that your source 
package
claims to offer)


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Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Adam D. Barratt]

On Wed, 2012-05-02 at 17:53 +0100, Wookey wrote:
> +++ Patrick Ouellette [2012-05-01 23:12 -0400]:
> > Of course the #! line is not the issue.  The issue is two upstream 
> > maintainers
> > separated by years and miles selected the same generic name for their binary
> > file.  Compounding the issue, some Debian Maintainer seeking to better the
> > project by packaging additional software for the project failed to perform
> > "due diligence" in researching if any of the binary names from the proposed
> > new package were already in use. 
> 
> Just a quick question - is there an easy way to do this?

At least for projects hosted / listed on a variety of sites such as
freshmeat^Wfreecode, there's Steve Kemp's "namecheck" script, a version
of which is included in devscripts.

Regards,

Adam


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Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Tollef Fog Heen]

]] Wookey 

> Just a quick question - is there an easy way to do this?

Given most names don't explain particularly well what the command does,
just use something inspired by pwgen.

-- 
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UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are


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Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Neil Williams]

On Wed, 2 May 2012 17:53:54 +0100
Wookey  wrote:

> +++ Patrick Ouellette [2012-05-01 23:12 -0400]:
> > file.  Compounding the issue, some Debian Maintainer seeking to better the
> > project by packaging additional software for the project failed to perform
> > "due diligence" in researching if any of the binary names from the proposed
> > new package were already in use. 
> 
> Just a quick question - is there an easy way to do this? I worry
> sometimes that I might be creating a binary name that is already used
> somewhere, and thus a potential clash, but it is not obvious to me how
> to check. Strictly this applies to every file in a package, although
> clashes are most likely in /usr/bin

ftp://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/dists/sid/Contents-amd64.gz ?

$ zgrep bin Contents-amd64.gz |wc -l
78822

There's also http://packages.debian.org/#search_contents which can
search for files listed within packages.

The 23Mb size of Contents*.gz is a barrier to doing this automatically
or via lintian etc. For those with slow connections, p.d.o is possibly
the best option, for specific files which may have problems.

-- 


Neil Williams
=
http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/



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Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Russ Allbery]

Wookey  writes:

> Just a quick question - is there an easy way to do this? I worry
> sometimes that I might be creating a binary name that is already used
> somewhere, and thus a potential clash, but it is not obvious to me how
> to check. Strictly this applies to every file in a package, although
> clashes are most likely in /usr/bin

I usually just search Debian, since we have most things, but it's not a
great solution.  djb at one point tried to start a registry of command
names at http://cr.yp.to/slashcommand/used but I don't think it's been
maintained.  (It doesn't, for example, have node.)

-- 
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Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Wookey]

+++ Patrick Ouellette [2012-05-01 23:12 -0400]:
> Of course the #! line is not the issue.  The issue is two upstream maintainers
> separated by years and miles selected the same generic name for their binary
> file.  Compounding the issue, some Debian Maintainer seeking to better the
> project by packaging additional software for the project failed to perform
> "due diligence" in researching if any of the binary names from the proposed
> new package were already in use. 

Just a quick question - is there an easy way to do this? I worry
sometimes that I might be creating a binary name that is already used
somewhere, and thus a potential clash, but it is not obvious to me how
to check. Strictly this applies to every file in a package, although
clashes are most likely in /usr/bin


Wookey


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[The Fungi]

On 2012-05-02 14:49:09 +0200 (+0200), Bernhard R. Link wrote:
> On the other hand, if renaming both of them is the only possible
> outcome if both parties cannot agree, it makes it more likely both
> sides will actually be willing to discuss the matter, instead of
> just issuing demands, hoping the other side will either give up or
> will be overruled by the TC at the end.

It seems to me to be more akin to, or some variant on, an
all-or-nothing Prisoner's Dilemma. Neither side is necessarily
encouraged to give in since the only "favorable" outcome for an
individual application--keeping its well-known name--comes from
holding out longest in the confrontation. In this scenario, altruism
on the part of one participant is the only alternative to preventing
an unfavorable outcome for both... and as such both sides (following
classic Game Theory principles) will default to the unfavorable
outcome. In other words, it does nothing to promote compromise
between uncooperative parties.

With the TC as an assumed impartial arbitrating body, this changes
the game to (theoretically) favor the side with the most effective
technical argument when neither can come to an agreement on their
own.
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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Jérémy Lal]

On 02/05/2012 14:49, Bernhard R. Link wrote:
> * Russ Allbery  [120501 19:28]:
>> I have to admit that I'm tempted to change Policy from "if there's no
>> consensus, rename both of them" to "if there's no consensus, try harder to
>> reach a consensus, and the technical committee decides in last resort."
>>
>> Most of the time, renaming both of them isn't the right answer.
> 
> On the other hand, if renaming both of them is the only possible outcome
> if both parties cannot agree, it makes it more likely both sides will
> actually be willing to discuss the matter, instead of just issuing demands,
> hoping the other side will either give up or will be overruled by the
> TC at the end.

Ok then, since i'm the nodejs maintainer, i'm willing to discuss this matter,
even privately if that is more effective, with someone representing the node
package, so we can close this issue in some way.

Jérémy Lal


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Bernhard R. Link]

* Russ Allbery  [120501 19:28]:
> I have to admit that I'm tempted to change Policy from "if there's no
> consensus, rename both of them" to "if there's no consensus, try harder to
> reach a consensus, and the technical committee decides in last resort."
>
> Most of the time, renaming both of them isn't the right answer.

On the other hand, if renaming both of them is the only possible outcome
if both parties cannot agree, it makes it more likely both sides will
actually be willing to discuss the matter, instead of just issuing demands,
hoping the other side will either give up or will be overruled by the
TC at the end.

Bernhard R. Link


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Jonathan Nieder]

Hi again,

Steve Langasek wrote:

> [Dropped Cc; what does any of this have to do with the DPL?]

I was alerting him to a conversation that was going nowhere fast,
in the hope that he might use his power to

participate in discussions amongst the Developers in a helpful
way

It has also been my experience in the past that he is way better than
I am at figuring out a productive way forward when an endeavor is
stuck.

[...]
> I mean that it is not reasonable to expect a maintainer to recognize a
> "consensus" among other people who are not the maintainer, where his or her
> package is concerned, except when that's a consensus of a
> constitutionally-empowered body such as the TC.

That implies two bugs in debian-policy. :)  You are probably right.

[...]
>   The Technical Committee may:
>
>   [...]
>
>   2. Decide any technical matter where Developers' jurisdictions overlap.

If I understand correctly, the general conclusion in this thread has
been that that is the right way to decide this.

I don't see anything fundamentally opposed to one another about the
goals of Pat, Jonas, and Jérémy, who seem to be the developers who
would be involved.  The implied impossibility of a reasonable
conversation between them without some authority figure arbitrating is
a bit disappointing.  Oh well.

[...]
> Ok - sorry, that's not what came across in your message, it's possible I
> overlooked some context up-thread that would have made this clear.  Yes, a
> bug that's been filed against the package and gone unanswered by the
> maintainer is fair game for NMUing.  OTOH, a bug that the maintainer
> disagrees is a bug would not be fair game.

Thanks again for the clarifications and sorry for the lack of clarity.
(Also sorry for the somewhat inflamatory way I've proceeded in this
discussion --- stating my biases up front and tying this in with my
concerns about lack of an active maintainer to vet changes to the node
package was probably not the best approach.  Someone with a more
delicate touch could probably have gotten more done.)

Sincerely,
Jonathan


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Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Russ Allbery]

Patrick Ouellette  writes:

> Of course the #! line is not the issue.  The issue is two upstream
> maintainers separated by years and miles selected the same generic name
> for their binary file.

I agree with this.

> Compounding the issue, some Debian Maintainer seeking to better the
> project by packaging additional software for the project failed to
> perform "due diligence" in researching if any of the binary names from
> the proposed new package were already in use.  Having packaged the
> software and uploaded it, someone noticed the issue and started us down
> the path we are on.

Maybe we should short-circuit this part of the conversation, since it
doesn't sound like you're horribly interested in agreeing to change the
name of node in the existing package.  :)

I think it would make sense to take this to the Technical Committee at
this point and just make a decision, unless anyone thinks something
substantially new is likely to turn up.  (We should probably give it a few
more days to see if anything does, but it's feeling increasingly unlikely
to me, as is the idea that we're all going to reach a consensus.)

-- 
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Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Patrick Ouellette]

On Tue, May 01, 2012 at 03:24:58PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Date: Tue, 01 May 2012 15:24:58 -0700
> From: Russ Allbery 
> Subject:  Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian
> To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org
> 
> Patrick Ouellette  writes:
> > On Sat, Apr 28, 2012 at 08:39:41PM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> 
> >> Node.js is becoming quite popular and is known generally to use "node" 
> >> in its hash-bang.
> 
> > Seriously? People are writing scripts that start
> > #!node
> 
> The #! part is really not the issue, since the two packages don't conflict
> there (the ham radio one is in /usr/sbin).
> 

Of course the #! line is not the issue.  The issue is two upstream maintainers
separated by years and miles selected the same generic name for their binary
file.  Compounding the issue, some Debian Maintainer seeking to better the
project by packaging additional software for the project failed to perform
"due diligence" in researching if any of the binary names from the proposed
new package were already in use.  Having packaged the software and uploaded
it, someone noticed the issue and started us down the path we are on.

> However, Googling for Node.js tutorials and documentation actually reveal
> that people usually *don't* use #!, which would avoid the conflict, and
> instead run "node ".  Which means when both packages are installed,
> which node they get depends on what their PATH looks like, which is the
> sort of conflict that we try to avoid.
> 

So Google says most people run the files interactively from the command
line, almost never from scripts? 

Be careful using search engine results to support your position.  You
can usually skew the results depending on which search engine you use
and how you word the search.

Do you still do things (especially repetitive things) the way you learned
in the tutorial/documentation?  Do you automate processes with shell scripts,
or type the command each time?


Pat


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Carsten Hey]

* Patrick Ouellette [2012-05-01 16:55 -0400]:
> I was under the impression that neither package was going to move forward with
> a binary named "node"

Some proposed this, some agreed, others did not.

In the just reported bug #671120 I wrote regarding this neither package
should get the name part of the policy:
| The common reading of the according section does neither match what
| seems to be the original intention [1] nor my common sense.
|
|  [1] http://lists.debian.org/<879142cjni@slip-61-16.ots.utexas.edu>


> The proposal was made for a transition plan to be made then the nodejs
> person quit talking/posting.

Ian's proposal was as far as I understood it when reading it basically
rolling a dice and I hope that I either misread it or that it was meant
as a joke.


If the node package needs to rename the binary it obviously needs a new
name ;)  Hamish suggested axnode once, the patch lying in the BTS uses
ax25-node.  Do you have any preference in case it is needed?


Thanks for caring about this thread.

Carsten


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Patrick Ouellette]

On Tue, May 01, 2012 at 01:07:11AM +0200, Carsten Hey wrote:
> Date: Tue, 1 May 2012 01:07:11 +0200
> From: Carsten Hey 
> Subject:  Re: Node.js and it's future in debian
> To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org
> Mail-Followup-To: Carsten Hey ,
>  debian-devel@lists.debian.org
> 
> * Carl Fürstenberg [2012-04-28 03:31 +0200]:
> > There has been an log struggle between the nodejs package and the node
> > package, which is still unresolved (bug #611698 for example) And I
> > wonder now what the future should look like.
> 
> In short I think that there is only one sane solution to this and that
> the way to reach this solution is to ask the tech-ctte for a decision.
> 
> 
> This is the second thread about this topic on -devel, the first one was
> in November 2011.  In both threads and in some smaller ones, people
> basically claimed things like (incomplete list):

It is at least the third discussion that I can remember.

> Given that node is a rarely used daemon and that nodejs is a widely used
> language, I think that nodejs should get the binary name node; but due
> to the non-responsiveness of node's maintainers I think this might be
> a case where involving the tech-ctte would help.
> 
> node's maintainers don't participate in such discussions in a reasonable
> and timely manner, for example the RC bug had no action for months
> despite the patch and nobody ever explained what exactly the problem of
> a changed binary name for a daemon would be (node can be used
> interactively, but it is not supposed to be used that way and those
> users that do would be able to set up an alias anyway).  The first
> answer from one of the uploaders was sent nearly a year after nodesjs'
> maintainer asked about this issue on the maintainer's list (back then he
> didn't seem to notice that those who answered were unrelated to the node
> package).  The subject of the -devel thread last year "Is anyone
> maintaining (the ham radio tool) node?" speaks for itself.

So expel all the maintainers for having a real life and not living and
breathing only the Debian project and it's fire hose like mailing lists.

If timeliness is an issue, email the maintainer(s) directly.  No other
package is subverted because of slowness to address a bug (the exception
being NMU uploads, which I would not class as subverting the package).
Packages are dropped from the release for RC bugs.

A package that has been in Debian for YEARS should not expect a RC 
bug to be filed on the basis on a name space collision. (Otherwise
look out for your favorite executable, because someone WILL name the
"next new thing" with the same name.)

As was put forth in the "Is anyone maintaining" thread, node is a fairly 
mature piece of code that has been working without major upstream changes
because it does the job it was written to do.

> 
> I assume all of node's uploaders did great work on many ham related
> packages, but all that the two uploaders that replied to this issue
> during the last two years did related to the node package is that they
> also replied to the "Call for debian hamradio developers pool" from
> node's actual but now retired maintainer who then added them as
> uploaders.  Only Hamish, who did not respond to this issue, uploaded
> node once in 2005, the others did never do any upload.  The responses
> from the other two uploaders were essentially "please report a bug"
> (although this was already done) by one; and "... then no package should
> get the name" and in one mail "this patch needs to be tested by someone
> who runs node and nodejs" by the other.
> 

There hasn't been any upstream changes in node for a long time.  The package
builds fine in the auto-builders and does what it was designed to do.

The number of active ham radio maintainers has varied over time, just like
other packages.  Right now there are only a few, and most of us are busy
(just like everyone else).

-- 
,-.
> Patrick Ouellette   | It is not fitting, when one is in God's service,  <
> pat(at)flying-gecko.net | to have a gloomy face or a chilling look. <
> Amateur Radio: NE4PO| -- Francis of Assisi  <
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Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Russ Allbery]

Patrick Ouellette  writes:
> On Sat, Apr 28, 2012 at 08:39:41PM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:

>> Node.js is becoming quite popular and is known generally to use "node" 
>> in its hash-bang.

> Seriously? People are writing scripts that start
> #!node

The #! part is really not the issue, since the two packages don't conflict
there (the ham radio one is in /usr/sbin).

However, Googling for Node.js tutorials and documentation actually reveal
that people usually *don't* use #!, which would avoid the conflict, and
instead run "node ".  Which means when both packages are installed,
which node they get depends on what their PATH looks like, which is the
sort of conflict that we try to avoid.

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Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Patrick Ouellette]

On Sat, Apr 28, 2012 at 08:39:41PM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> Node.js is becoming quite popular and is known generally to use "node" 
> in its hash-bang.

Seriously? People are writing scripts that start
#!node

That is truely messed up!

Pat

-- 
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>   pat(at)flying-gecko.net   |   to be loved as to love. <
>   Amateur Radio: NE4PO  |   -- Francis of Assisi<
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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Patrick Ouellette]

On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 08:26:47PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> 
> > Contrast that with the positive actitude of the NFS developers of CITI
> > at UMichi when heimdal-dev and libgssapi-dev both contained
> > /usr/lib/libgssapi.a [1]. They went to the trouble of renaming libgssapi
> > to libgssglue.
> 
> Indeed, and I'm very grateful for that.  But realistically that was also a
> lot easier than renaming Node.js's interpreter, and I think the CITI folks
> did actually know that was coming.  The conflict had already been pointed
> out in the Kerberos community and had been discussed prior to it coming up
> here.  But more significantly that library was essentially used only by
> NFS, so only a few clients had to change and the renaming was fairly
> straightforward.

The Node.js developer KNEW there were other binaries named node, and just
went on as if it did not matter.  Check the development history/blog.

> 
> Node.js is at this point another matter; it's the topic of books,
> widespread use independent of the upstream developers, and lots of
> articles and Internet documentation with a life of its own.  A quick
> Google search comes up with tons of indepedent sites telling people to run
> programs with "node ".  That makes renaming a much more
> difficult prospect.

And the ham radio binary is the subject of sections of how-to's and books
on amateur radio.  It also has "a life of it's own" in the ham radio
community.

If a binary's name is simply a matter of a popularity contest in Debian,
at some point every name may be made to change.

-- 
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>   Patrick Ouellette |It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.   <
>   pat(at)flying-gecko.net   |-- Francis of Assisi   <
>   Amateur Radio: NE4PO  |   <
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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Steve Langasek]

[Dropped Cc; what does any of this have to do with the DPL?]

On Tue, May 01, 2012 at 04:32:49PM -0500, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
> Steve Langasek wrote:
> > On Tue, May 01, 2012 at 03:30:50PM -0500, Jonathan Nieder wrote:

> >> Wait, really?  What happened to respect by maintainers for the
> >> project?

> > "The project" is not "a set of random maintainers who have a filename
> > conflict with you".

> Sorry, I don't understand the above sentence.  Do you mean that it is
> impossible to come to a consensus when one maintainer of a relevant
> package disagrees?  I can understand that claim, but it doesn't seem
> to be the same as the sentence above.

I mean that it is not reasonable to expect a maintainer to recognize a
"consensus" among other people who are not the maintainer, where his or her
package is concerned, except when that's a consensus of a
constitutionally-empowered body such as the TC.

> >  We have a constitution to *prevent* such decisions
> > being made by a tyranny of the majority of the minority.

> Thanks, that perhaps suggests a method for resolving this.  Could you
> point to the section of the constitution you are referring to?

I am bewildered that I should need to point this out:

  6. Technical committee

  6.1. Powers

  The Technical Committee may:

  [...]

  2. Decide any technical matter where Developers' jurisdictions overlap.

 In cases where Developers need to implement compatible technical
 policies or stances (for example, if they disagree about the priorities
 of conflicting packages, or about ownership of a command name, or about
 which package is responsible for a bug that both maintainers agree is a
 bug, or about who should be the maintainer for a package) the technical
 committee may decide the matter.

As you seem to be involved with various process discussions within Debian,
may I gently suggest that you familiarize yourself with our governing
document? :)

> > NMUs are *not* a tool for forcing a maintainer to accept a technical
> > outcome he disagrees with.

> Sure.  To be clear, I should say that I am not advocating that anyone
> NMU the node or nodejs package.  What I meant (and I could easily be
> wrong) is that when the maintainer of a package is not working on an
> important bug and has not given any reason, Debian does not need to be
> held hostage by that.

Ok - sorry, that's not what came across in your message, it's possible I
overlooked some context up-thread that would have made this clear.  Yes, a
bug that's been filed against the package and gone unanswered by the
maintainer is fair game for NMUing.  OTOH, a bug that the maintainer
disagrees is a bug would not be fair game.

-- 
Steve Langasek   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/
slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Russ Allbery]

Patrick Ouellette  writes:
> On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 08:26:47PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:

>> Indeed, and I'm very grateful for that.  But realistically that was
>> also a lot easier than renaming Node.js's interpreter, and I think the
>> CITI folks did actually know that was coming.  The conflict had already
>> been pointed out in the Kerberos community and had been discussed prior
>> to it coming up here.  But more significantly that library was
>> essentially used only by NFS, so only a few clients had to change and
>> the renaming was fairly straightforward.

> The Node.js developer KNEW there were other binaries named node, and
> just went on as if it did not matter.  Check the development
> history/blog.

The important part is the last sentence: changing the name was fairly
easy.  Also, upstream was willing to change it, which in this case I doubt
is the case (although we can certainly ask).

>> Node.js is at this point another matter; it's the topic of books,
>> widespread use independent of the upstream developers, and lots of
>> articles and Internet documentation with a life of its own.  A quick
>> Google search comes up with tons of indepedent sites telling people to
>> run programs with "node ".  That makes renaming a much
>> more difficult prospect.

> And the ham radio binary is the subject of sections of how-to's and
> books on amateur radio.  It also has "a life of it's own" in the ham
> radio community.

That community is much smaller, and the binary isn't invoked directly by
users, which makes the impact fairly minimal in practice.

You aren't going to get any argument that the Node.js upstream did
something that was at the least rude.  But we have no control over that,
unfortunately.  We have to live with the consequences, and I think
usability for our users is more important than fairness if they come
directly in conflict, which I think they are in this case.

> If a binary's name is simply a matter of a popularity contest in Debian,
> at some point every name may be made to change.

I think that assertion is unsupported.  We don't encounter situations like
this that frequently.  We will continue to encounter them, but I think
we're talking about a case every year or two.

-- 
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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Patrick Ouellette]

On Sat, Apr 28, 2012 at 03:31:02AM +0200, Carl Fürstenberg wrote:
> 
> There has been an log struggle between the nodejs package and the node
> package, which is still unresolved (bug #611698 for example) And I
> wonder now what the future should look like.
> 
> To summarize the problem:
> * the nodejs upstream binary is called "node", and the upstream
> developers have refused to change it's binary name to nodejs for
> debian;
> * The the hamradio package "node" shipping a binary called "node", and
> as it's so old, the developers argue that the package must ship a
> binary called "node" or breakage will occur.
> * The reason the nodejs developers want to ship the binary as "node"
> is because all programs written for nodejs all has /usr/bin/node in
> it's shebang
> * the nodejs package are not allowed to conflict on the node package
> just because the binary name is the same
> 
> As I'm not a hamradio user, I'm off course biased towards letting
> nodejs having the "node" binary and let it pass to testing. But we
> must find a solution to this, as nodejs is getting more and more used,
> and developers are forced to install nodejs from source to be able to
> use it instead of install it via the package manager.
> 

I was under the impression that neither package was going to move forward with
a binary named "node" 

The proposal was made for a transition plan to be made then the nodejs 
person quit talking/posting.

Pat
-- 
,-.
>  Patrick Ouellette|   Start by doing what's necessary; then do  <
>  pat(at)flying-gecko.net  |   what's possible; and suddenly you are doing   <
>  Amateur Radio: NE4PO |   the impossible.  -- Francis of Assisi <
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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Jonathan Nieder]

Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Tue, May 01, 2012 at 03:30:50PM -0500, Jonathan Nieder wrote:

>> Wait, really?  What happened to respect by maintainers for the
>> project?
>
> "The project" is not "a set of random maintainers who have a filename
> conflict with you".

Sorry, I don't understand the above sentence.  Do you mean that it is
impossible to come to a consensus when one maintainer of a relevant
package disagrees?  I can understand that claim, but it doesn't seem
to be the same as the sentence above.

>  We have a constitution to *prevent* such decisions
> being made by a tyranny of the majority of the minority.

Thanks, that perhaps suggests a method for resolving this.  Could you
point to the section of the constitution you are referring to?

> NMUs are *not* a tool for forcing a maintainer to accept a technical outcome
> he disagrees with.

Sure.  To be clear, I should say that I am not advocating that anyone
NMU the node or nodejs package.  What I meant (and I could easily be
wrong) is that when the maintainer of a package is not working on an
important bug and has not given any reason, Debian does not need to be
held hostage by that.

Jonathan


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Steve Langasek]

On Tue, May 01, 2012 at 03:30:50PM -0500, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
> > I was talking about a consensus among the maintainers of the affected
> > packages.  Even if all but the maintainers of one of the affected
> > packages would agree to a solution, there would be no way to implement
> > this solution without asking the tech-ctte or (what would be not
> > appropriate for this) a GR.

> Wait, really?  What happened to respect by maintainers for the
> project?

"The project" is not "a set of random maintainers who have a filename
conflict with you".  We have a constitution to *prevent* such decisions
being made by a tyranny of the majority of the minority.

>  What happened to NMUs when a maintainer is stalling work?

NMUs are *not* a tool for forcing a maintainer to accept a technical outcome
he disagrees with.  It's demotivating enough to be overridden, without it
coming in the form of a fellow developer taking matters into his own hands.

-- 
Steve Langasek   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/
slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Jonathan Nieder]

Carsten Hey wrote:

> I was talking about a consensus among the maintainers of the affected
> packages.  Even if all but the maintainers of one of the affected
> packages would agree to a solution, there would be no way to implement
> this solution without asking the tech-ctte or (what would be not
> appropriate for this) a GR.

Wait, really?  What happened to respect by maintainers for the
project?  What happened to NMUs when a maintainer is stalling work?

[...]
> node.js might not be that widespread in use as python, but shipping
> a node.js with /usr/bin/nodejs seems to be broken in a similar way as
> the above example.

I would agree with you if we were proposing going forward against
upstream's wishes.  But I was not proposing that --- we don't know
upstream's wishes yet, but I was going to send a patch once we know
it works.  Sorry for the lack of clarity.

This kind of thing has precedent.  For example, there is gmake and
there are commands like axlisten.

Hoping that clarifies a little,
Jonathan


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Carsten Hey]

* Jonathan Nieder [2012-05-01 12:57 -0500]:
> Carsten Hey wrote:
>
> > I don't think that there ever will be a consensus in all those
> > discussions without discussing in a reasonable way (which failed in the
> > past multiple times).
>
> Note that a consensus does not imply everyone agreeing.

I was talking about a consensus among the maintainers of the affected
packages.  Even if all but the maintainers of one of the affected
packages would agree to a solution, there would be no way to implement
this solution without asking the tech-ctte or (what would be not
appropriate for this) a GR.

> I am starting
> to see a consensus already and would welcome well reasoned opinions
> and clarifications that show where my understanding is lacking.
>
> By the way, separate from what happens to the "node" command are a few
> other questions:
>
>  - Can we come up with alternate names for both commands, so while
>Debian users might be using the "node" command, Debian packages do
>not need to?

nodejs for node.js and ax25-node for the ham radio node.  If ax25-node
is not appropriate, then one of the debian-hams can suggest something
more appropriate.

>I think on the Node.js side this is basically a solved problem,

I would consider a Linux distribution that uses /usr/bin/monty-python as
binary for the python language to be utterly broken.  Users of it would
not be able to run any python script without adapting its shebang. Even
making /usr/bin/python a symlink that can be changed between a game and
the language would not make the situation any better, since users that
do not want to change the shebang line would need to check if the
symlink is set to the language on every box they want to run a python
script on.

node.js might not be that widespread in use as python, but shipping
a node.js with /usr/bin/nodejs seems to be broken in a similar way as
the above example.

Anyway, if the nodejs maintainers would be happy with a hack that
involves changing /usr/bin/node to /usr/bin/nodejs, then there is not
much we could do about this as it's their package.

>  - Is the "node" package undermaintained?  Should it be orphaned to
>encourage active users to take on the burden of its maintenance
>without worrying about stepping on people's toes?

If it would be orphaned, then the problem could be solved easily by
a QA-upload.

It was maintained in a great way until the one that did the last upload
retired from maintaining it in 2009.  I'd assume that a FTBFS bug or
a missing dependency would be solved by the remaining uploaders quickly
(as it happened in 2005 once) and the packages does not require much
attention in general.  I don't think it is orphaned, but I also wouldn't
consider it to be well maintained either.


Carsten


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Jonathan Nieder]

Carsten Hey wrote:

> I don't think that there ever will be a consensus in all those
> discussions without discussing in a reasonable way (which failed in the
> past multiple times).

Note that a consensus does not imply everyone agreeing.  I am starting
to see a consensus already and would welcome well reasoned opinions
and clarifications that show where my understanding is lacking.

By the way, separate from what happens to the "node" command are a few
other questions:

 - Can we come up with alternate names for both commands, so while
   Debian users might be using the "node" command, Debian packages do
   not need to?

   (Among other benefits, this would simplify upgrades for people who
   have /usr/sbin too early in $PATH.)

   I think on the Node.js side this is basically a solved problem,
   though help with the actual coding would be welcome.  (E.g., I have
   a patch against upstream 0.7.y that does the right thing, but 0.7.y
   is not packaged for experimental yet.  Feel free to contact me or
   nod...@packages.debian.org if you have time to help.)

   There is a patch taking the first step in this direction for the
   LinuxNode package at  but no
   maintainer has weighed in since then, except to note on
   debian-devel@ that they are having trouble finding someone to test
   the patch.

 - Is the "node" package undermaintained?  Should it be orphaned to
   encourage active users to take on the burden of its maintenance
   without worrying about stepping on people's toes?

Thanks,
Jonathan


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Russ Allbery]

Carsten Hey  writes:

> The origin of what the policy suggests to do if there is no consensus is
> a mail from Guy Maor <879142cjni@slip-61-16.ots.utexas.edu>, in
> which he writes:
> | That's basically a stick to force developers to reach a consensus.

> Christian Schwarz uploaded this change later in this month.

> I don't think that there ever will be a consensus in all those
> discussions without discussing in a reasonable way (which failed in the
> past multiple times).  Previously to this, asking the VP of Engineering
> for a decision was suggested in this thread.

I have to admit that I'm tempted to change Policy from "if there's no
consensus, rename both of them" to "if there's no consensus, try harder to
reach a consensus, and the technical committee decides in last resort."

Most of the time, renaming both of them isn't the right answer.

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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Carsten Hey]

* Carsten Hey [2012-05-01 01:07 +0200]:
> Only Hamish, who did not respond to this issue, uploaded
> node once in 2005,

I need to correct myself, Hamish replied once.  In
<20110208230458.ga23...@risingsoftware.com> he wrote:
| I think renaming the node binary to axnode is reasonable and
| consistent with this, but I don't think the nodejs program should be
| using that name either.

Pat replied earlier than I thought, but these earlier replies were
indistinguishable from replies of other people that are not listed in
the uploaders field (i.e., without priorly checking who is listed in
it).


The origin of what the policy suggests to do if there is no consensus is
a mail from Guy Maor <879142cjni@slip-61-16.ots.utexas.edu>, in
which he writes:
| That's basically a stick to force developers to reach a consensus.

Christian Schwarz uploaded this change later in this month.


I don't think that there ever will be a consensus in all those
discussions without discussing in a reasonable way (which failed in the
past multiple times).  Previously to this, asking the VP of Engineering
for a decision was suggested in this thread.


Carsten


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Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Carsten Hey]

* Carl Fürstenberg [2012-04-28 03:31 +0200]:
> There has been an log struggle between the nodejs package and the node
> package, which is still unresolved (bug #611698 for example) And I
> wonder now what the future should look like.

In short I think that there is only one sane solution to this and that
the way to reach this solution is to ask the tech-ctte for a decision.


This is the second thread about this topic on -devel, the first one was
in November 2011.  In both threads and in some smaller ones, people
basically claimed things like (incomplete list):
  * node is older and nodejs should have checked the binary name
  * first come first server
  * nodejs is used as node in the shebang line
  * my node is more widely used than yours (which node is meant depends
on the year)
  * node is a daemon and there it does not matter what name it uses
  * one of them should use the binary name node
  * none should use the binary name node if there is no consensus
  * let the user decide via debconf
  * users from either group would complain if they need to use a name
other than node
  * policy is wrong, packages should conflict
  * conflicts would be wrong

Nowadays, the popcon stats for both packages strongly suggest that most
of node's user are users that wanted to install node.js and did not
remove the node package after noticing that it is not what they
expected.

Given that node is a rarely used daemon and that nodejs is a widely used
language, I think that nodejs should get the binary name node; but due
to the non-responsiveness of node's maintainers I think this might be
a case where involving the tech-ctte would help.

node's maintainers don't participate in such discussions in a reasonable
and timely manner, for example the RC bug had no action for months
despite the patch and nobody ever explained what exactly the problem of
a changed binary name for a daemon would be (node can be used
interactively, but it is not supposed to be used that way and those
users that do would be able to set up an alias anyway).  The first
answer from one of the uploaders was sent nearly a year after nodesjs'
maintainer asked about this issue on the maintainer's list (back then he
didn't seem to notice that those who answered were unrelated to the node
package).  The subject of the -devel thread last year "Is anyone
maintaining (the ham radio tool) node?" speaks for itself.

I assume all of node's uploaders did great work on many ham related
packages, but all that the two uploaders that replied to this issue
during the last two years did related to the node package is that they
also replied to the "Call for debian hamradio developers pool" from
node's actual but now retired maintainer who then added them as
uploaders.  Only Hamish, who did not respond to this issue, uploaded
node once in 2005, the others did never do any upload.  The responses
from the other two uploaders were essentially "please report a bug"
(although this was already done) by one; and "... then no package should
get the name" and in one mail "this patch needs to be tested by someone
who runs node and nodejs" by the other.


Regards
Carsten


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Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Igor Pashev]

+1 to let Node.js be just "node"


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Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Marco d'Itri]

On Apr 29, Harald Jenny  wrote:

> Agreed but how long would it take to fix the policy vs how long would it
> take to produce this package in the face of next stable release?
The current situation does not even cause any practical problems, just 
a policy violation.

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ciao,
Marco


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Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Harald Jenny]

On Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 04:23:25PM +0200, Marco d'Itri wrote:
> On Apr 29, Harald Jenny  wrote:
> 
> > Wouldn't this solve the whole dilemma in a policy compliant and easy
> > enough fashion that it could be used or what error is there in my idea?
> If fixing a real world problem requires so much overhead because of 
> policy concerns then it looks like the policy needs to be fixed.
> Policy is not a religion.
> 
> -- 
> ciao,
> Marco

Agreed but how long would it take to fix the policy vs how long would it
take to produce this package in the face of next stable release?

Kind regards
Harald Jenny


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Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Marco d'Itri]

On Apr 29, Harald Jenny  wrote:

> Wouldn't this solve the whole dilemma in a policy compliant and easy
> enough fashion that it could be used or what error is there in my idea?
If fixing a real world problem requires so much overhead because of 
policy concerns then it looks like the policy needs to be fixed.
Policy is not a religion.

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ciao,
Marco


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Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian

[Harald Jenny]

On Sat, Apr 28, 2012 at 08:39:41PM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> On 12-04-28 at 01:50pm, Joey Hess wrote:
> > Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> > > As I understand the current status, it has already on this list been 
> > > resolved that *both* packages should back off from using the 
> > > clashing name "node".
> > > 
> > > I also am biased in one direction but shall not say which as I see 
> > > no benefit at this point in rehashing the discussion: Both packaging 
> > > "camps" have clearly demonstrated a lack of interest in letting the 
> > > other use the name "node", which means we must both step off of it.

Hi all,

I'm not sure if such this solution was already thought of so I have
choosen to present my approach:

A new package named node is created which contains two symlinks
/usr/(s)bin/node, a debconf question, link managing scripts and some
sort of trigger.
Both conflicting packages get a NMU by a neutral member renaming the
node command and adding a dedepency on the new package named node.
When installing only one of the two packages it automatically gets the
node link and everybody is happy.
If both are installed the person is presented a debconf question which
allows him to choose which node* should be the one.

Wouldn't this solve the whole dilemma in a policy compliant and easy
enough fashion that it could be used or what error is there in my idea?

Have a nice sunday
Harald Jenny


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