Hello Ian, This is not a personal response to you, I am just pigging back on your email.
On Tue, Nov 01, 2016 at 08:50:38PM +0000, Ian Jackson wrote:
> Sruthi Chandran writes ("Bug#840937: ITP: node-kind-of -- Get the native type
> of a value"):
> > * URL : https://github.com/jonschlinkert/kind-of
>
> Pirate Praveen writes ("Bug#842129: ITP: node-path-type -- Check if a path is
> a file, directory, or symlink"):
> > * URL : https://github.com/sindresorhus/path-type#readme
>
> I picked these two almost at random.
>
> I appreciate you're working hard to package up all this web
> application infrastructure. This is an area that Debian is doing
> rather poorly in and it is good to see efforts to improve it.
>
> But:
>
> These are tiny packages and there seem to be lots and lots and lots of
> them.
>
> Every new source package and binary package is (or causes):
> * An entry in Sources and Packages that everyone, even everyone
> who doesn't use it, needs to download
> * A database entry in each of our package management systems
> (the DAK db, the BTS, the PTS/tracker, buildds, etc.)
> * Processing overhead for every Debian system everywhere on
> the planet, while parsing packaging databases, representing
> package graphs
> * A mail like these ITPs
> * Human effort to review it separately in NEW, ITPs, sponsorship (if
> applicable), etc., which would be easier if aggregated
> * Corresponding edges in the Debian dependency graphs
> * Probably several separate git repositories
>
> Our systems are not really set up for so many packages. They were
> designed with the assumption that a package would represent a
> substantial amount of upstream work, so that the Debian overhead is
> modest by comparison.
>
> Can you explain why you don't aggregate these into bigger packages,
> for use in Debian ?
>
> I don't think it matters very much exactly what the aggregation
> boundaries are but I think given the size of these packages when I
> looked at a couple upstream, you could profitably put many dozens of
> these tiny libraries into a single .dsc and .deb.
As a regular reader of debian-devel, I must say I am frustrated by this
discussion being raised yet another time. We must have had similar
threads, with *the same* arguments, 5 or 6 times in the last year. This
has been discussed to exaustion, and there is no consensus.
Unfortunately if we want to have useful (FSVO useful) stuff that is
written in Javascript/Node.js in the Debian archive, following what we
all accepted as the DFSG and the Debian standards of quality, we will
have to live with it.
I won't repeat any of the arguments that were already provided several
times, because I am tired. If I, who do very little, or none, of the
actual work necessary, am tired, I imagine how the people actually doing
the work feel. I am grateful that there is people willing to put this
work in, so let's please let them do it without rehashing the same
arguments over and over and over every few months.
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