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Author: Richard
Date:  
To: dng
Subject: Re: [Dng] recommendation for consideration: keep as close to debian as possible
On Feb 14, 2015 6:31 PM, "Richard" <richard.holt@???> wrote:
>
>
> On Feb 14, 2015 5:29 PM, "Luke Leighton" <lkcl@???> wrote:
> >
> > hellekin <hellekin <at> dyne.org> writes:
> >
> > >
> > > On 02/14/2015 10:16 AM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
> > > > On Sat, Feb 14, 2015 at 8:12 AM, KatolaZ <katolaz <at> freaknet.org>

wrote:
> > > >> On Thu, Feb 12, 2015 at 04:01:58PM +0000, Luke Kenneth Casson

Leighton
> > wrote:
> > > >
> > > >>> is it the intent of the devuan team to:
> > > >>>
> > > >>> (a) create a "fork" which will always, at all times, without

fail,
> > > >>> require that a debian repo be placed in /etc/apt/sources.list
> > > >>>
> > > >>> or
> > > >>>
> > > >>> (b) create a "fork" of the *entire debian package repository*,

such
> > > >>> that it will end up over time to be as completely incompatible

with
> > > >>> debian as ubuntu is today.
> > > >
> > > *** From
> > > https://git.devuan.org/devuan/devuan-project/wikis/ProjectDescription
> > >
> > > "Devuan is born for a simple goal: having a systemd-free debian jessie
> > > to preserve freedom choice on init and decoupling between init and the
> > > rest of the system ... initially, it will NOT be a complete fork, but
> > > just a complete infrastructure to distribute a personalized version of
> > > debian jessie, testing and unstable where some packages from us will

be
> > > pinned up on top of the debian repositories..."
> >
> > ok, great. whilst it's close, it still doesn't clearly answer the
> > question, though, and i notice, also, that the above is not made clear
> > on the web site.
> >
> > in other words, there are a lot of words on the main http://devuan.org
> > web site but nothing that's definitive. a lot of position statements
> > and aims, but nothing concrete.
> >
> > to illustrate the difference, let's rewrite the above:
> >
> > "Devuan has a simple goal: to make it easy for Debian users to
> > entirely remove systemd yet to keep their Debian systems fully
> > functional, up-to-date and fully compatible with Debian.
> >
> > The initial method to achieve this will be to add one extra line to
> > sources.list (in a similar fashion to deb-multimedia), where key
> > strategic packages can then be replaced with systemd-free equivalents
> > by simply running 'apt-get upgrade'
> >
> > Our immediate goal is to provide automated transition scripts

integrated
> > into the replacement packages for debian jessie, testing and unstable,
> > and to maintain them indefinitely.
> >
> > Whilst it may prove unavoidable, we seek to actively avoid a complete
> > fork of Debian (learning the lessons from Ubuntu), not least because
> > we wish to make it easy for users to transition between Devuan and
> > Debian (with and without systemd) and we appreciate that a complete
> > fork would make that much more challenging."
> >
> >
> > hellenkin: can you see the difference between that and what's on the
> > wiki (and on the web site)?
> >
> > what i wrote makes the following things very clear:
> >
> >  1) your debian system will not be screwed up or compromised by using
> >     devuan.  you will also not lose any functionality or packages.

> >
> >  2) we understand the difficulty of maintaining an entire distro.
> >     we implicitly understand that we will not get to 1,000 maintainers
> >     in the immediate future, so we are being realistic and will not
> >     be doing a complete fork.  it's too much effort for us, and we
> >     recognise that you probably wouldn't trust us (i.e. wouldn't
> >     even want to *try* upgrading to devuan) if we created one.

> >
> >  3) we're restricting the scope of what we're doing to a few key
> >     strategic packages, and we're going to make it easy for you to
> >     remove systemd.  that's our core focus.

> >
> > and a few more things, besides.
> >
> > if you recall, i said that my initial concern was that devuan was
> > giving serious consideration to including TDE and many other things
> > besides. i've tried TDE: it works... but because it has to replace
> > one of the key packages (which they haven't kept up-to-date
> > because they don't have enough resources) i am now in "package
> > dependency hell" even though i have specified to use the debian/testing
> > version of TDE.
> >
> > this is a common problem that anyone who has regularly upgraded
> > a debian/testing system that uses deb-multimedia will be familiar with:
> > packages from two disparate repositories are *NOT* properly kept in
> > sync: it's simply not possible. at one point back when ffmpeg was
> > depending on versions 0.49 of libav and friends, my system went into
> > complete melt-down due to broken package dependencies. i couldn't
> > upgrade *anything* because of it. in the end i had to remove
> > deb-multimedia entirely, compile some of the packages from source (!)
> > to do what i needed to do, and i waited about 6 months for things to
> > stabilise before beginning again.
> >
> > [note: with deb-multimedia i was lucky because it was not key strategic
> > packages, i *could* remove them. if it had been anything in the core
> > packages - the essential ones - i would have been *really* screwed.
> > and that's really the whole point of why i seek clarity on what it is
> > that you are doing, here].
> >
> > with a small (busy) team, you are stuck in the middle between a rock
> > and a hard place.
> >
> > on one hand you need to keep the alternative packages fully up-to-date:
> > even *one day* late means that people will have a system which becomes
> > unuseable due to version-bumps from debian.
> >
> > and on the other hand you have to consider doing a complete total fork
> > of debian, with all that that implies (and it's one HELL of a lot of
> > work to replace 1,000 debian maintainers with however many people you
> > have), *and* you have to have decent mirror infrastructure - i think
> > 160 Gb was the last estimate of the amount of disk space that i heard
> > phil was using for free.hands.com's debian mirrors (a couple years

back).
> > and free.hands.com i believe also flat-lines a 100mbit/sec ethernet
> > connection at 100% capacity.
> >
> > so.
> >
> > can i recommend that you discuss amongst yourselves within the devuan
> > team as to precisely and exactly what the direction is? can we have
> > a consensus from the team as to whether everyone understands fully the
> > scope of the project, outlines a clear roadmap (and agrees to it), and
> > so on?
> >
> > and once that is agreed can i suggest updating the web site to make
> > that consensus absolutely clear?
> >
> > tia,
> >
> > l.
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Dng mailing list
> > Dng@???
> > https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng


Thanks, for your insights.
This is useful information.

Looking forward to Devuan-0.1.

Gmail on Android is limiting.

Richard.