I took issue with Adrian's phrasing around "disgrace", and had intended to reply, but didn't.
On Mon, Nov 20, 2017 at 01:20:06PM +0000, Ian Jackson wrote:
I would much rather have a minimally maintained package, from Debian, in my stable release, than have to roll my own. This is particularly true if I don't know yet whether the thing is what I want. Trying something out from "apt-get" in stretch is a lot less work and a lot less risky than git cloning some random url and then blundering about trying to get the thing going.
This is in part because there's a broad perception that if a piece of software has been packaged, it meets a certain standard of quality. However, that perception is based on experience, and the more bad packages in the archive, the less people's experiences will match this perception, and the perception/Debian's reputation will change. On many occasions, when I've been looking for a piece of software for a problem I haven't worked with before, I've installed the half-dozen or so unfamiliar packages from Debian because I shared this perception, and on many occasions I've found the quality of the packaged programs to be appalling, the programs to be essentially unusable, or to very likely result in user data corruption. One occasion I remember vividly because I was so frustrated that the software had been packaged at all. I recall finding and filing a half-dozen or so data corruption bugs within 30 minutes of evaluating the software, all of which were completely ignored. I don't want to talk specifics here because I don't want to out any particular maintainers, this was just an acute example of a wider problem. So I can share Adrian's frustration (if not his phrasing), although in my case I'm talking about the quality of the software being packaged more than the quality of the packaging. A maintainer still needs to make a responsible decision as to whether the software is sufficiently high quality to be a fit for Debian. -- ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Jonathan Dowland ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://jmtd.net ⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀ Please do not CC me, I am subscribed to the list.
