Follow-on question at the bottom....

On 12/31/15 3:10 PM, Steve Litt wrote:
> I guess I'm an "upstream", being the originator of the VimOutliner
> project (probably a few thousand users), the UMENU project (probably
> about 10 users), the Amounter project (2 confirmed users), and several
> less-used pieces of software.
>
> As a Developer, I'm not a fan of packaging, because from the very
> outset I try very hard to make my software have minimal dependencies,
> I try to make its dependencies universally available, and if it's C I
> make it cc -Wall myprogram with no errors or warnings. Except for the
> notoriously undeployable UMENU, my stuff goes on with a few copy
> commands and maybe a compile. No need to obfuscate it with a package.
>
<snip>
> As a user, of course I'm not going to hand compile LibreOffice, Sigil
> or Firefox (Iceweasel). My mama didn't raise no fool.
>
> But when it comes to all of djb's stuff, alternate init systems,
> project supervision software, or newer than newest versions of LyX,
> I ./configure;make;make test;make install. Again, my mama didn't raise
> no fool.
<snip>
>
> Packages and package managers are a great thing. I'd never want to
> forego a good package manager. You'll never catch me hand-compiling
> Firefox. But in my opinion, sometimes you're much better off kissing the
> package manager goodbye for a specific app, and
> using ./configure;make;make test;make install, or whatever else the
> README or INSTALL file tells you to do.

AND...


On 12/31/15 2:14 PM, Nate Bargmann wrote:
> Hi Miles, et. al.
>
> As an upstream developer/maintainer and downstream user of packages both
> locally built and packaged, I've come to the conclusion that, at least
<snip>
> At least due to the FHS Debian has never taken steps to violate the idea
> that /usr/local is reserved for the local administrator. As a user of
> GNU Autotools in the projects I am involved in this is a good thing as
> this is the Autotools default destination directory.
>
>

<snip>

>
> In short, as an upstream it's my job to make sure that 'configure; make;
> make install' "just work" and is documented and it's the distribution's
> job to make sure its packaging system is documented. Did I explain it
> well enough to see where the line of responsibility between upstream and
> distribution lies and their responsibility to the user?
>

YUP - made it very clear, and I basically agree with delineation. I
tend to agree with Steve re. when to use, and not use, package
management (and with Joel's comment re. "checkinstall" making it easier
to remove things later.

A follow-up question: What, if anything, do you guys include in the way
of init scripts?

[My current observation is that systemd's biggest impact on my operation
is that it kind of breaks some sysvinit scripts, and not a lot of people
include systemd configs. Hence, my aversion to updating my current
Debian installation, and why I'm looking at Devuan and a few other
options for my next, and overdue, major update to our production servers.]

Miles


--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra