Hi Seemant,
On 30-Mar-07, at 6:28 AM, Seemant Kulleen wrote:
Historical reasons aren't necessarily the correct reasons. I'd almost
say that your sentence has officially heralded the age of
Debianisation.
There are practical reasons too. Like the fact that all of our users
are now using portage, and making a switch is clearly a non-trivial
issue, which has to be well thought out.
Have you ever tried to add features to a frankenstein of a beast?
What
is the value to you in doing something like that? Isn't there more
value in designing something based on what you've learned instead? We
can all go all day about this and not convince each other, so please
let's just drop this line of thinking.
I agree.
What are you basing any of this on? Sounds like speculation that
doesn't help anything.
I fail to understand why the portage developers would refuse to
accept a patch that actually improves something (without causing
major regressions i.e.). If they do refuse such a patch (for
political reasons), then we have a serious problem. However, based on
past experience with the portage developers, I doubt this would happen.
Debian was never a distro that I thought we'd emulate, or should
emulate. Turns out I was wrong, I suppose.
I'm not saying we should emulate Debian, but rather conveying the
fact that, whether we like it or not, they're the only distro that we
can really compare ourselves with. Of course, given a situation,
there's more than one way to solve a problem; so we don't have to
emulate them. I for one, sure don't want to, because I know there are
many of us who've "run away" from Debian into the arms of Gentoo :)
Point is, the day when more than 50% of the devs feel we need a new
package manager, will be the day a replacement will be made.
I'm not entirely sure on your reasons for this statement. If
developers' don't face any API changes, why should we have to have a
political vote on which package manager gets dubbed the one true
official one? Why should it be a popularity contest? Why can it
not be
a technical superiority issue? If there is a compelling set of
technical reasons to replace portage, why ignore that set?
I base that on the fact that all developers are more or less
"equally" capable of making a technical decision. Maybe I am wrong.
I wasn't indicating that a "popularity" contest should be held,
because I trust the developers will cast their vote only after
*technically* evaluating the options. I also don't think it's fair
for a small minority of developers to make the switch on behalf of
the rest of us, which is why I mentioned a number like "50%". An
election is not always political ;)
Portage is more than the package manager. Its life comes from the
portage _tree_. Portage is just the tool that is used to use that
tree.
If that tool is outdated (and let's be honest, it kind of is), then
switching it is not actually a bad thing.
Agreed. But if so many of us do think that there are better package
managers out there that do a magnificent job of utilizing the tree,
then I fail to understand why no-one is seriously considering a switch?
In sum, I'm not sure I like this direction of basing technical
things on
political decisions.
Ok, I'm sure a lot of us agree on the fact that portage is
technically outdated and is Gentoo's own "Frankenstein". Time for a
replacement, but what do you think would be the repercussions of
proposing something like that? If they are not catastrophic, might I
initiate such a proposal?
Thanks and Best Regards,
--
Anant
--
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