Debian packaging - feedback, please!
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Steve8x8
Jan 17, 2011, 3:36:31 AM1/17/11
to geotoad
When I looked for an alternative to geo-* (which went member-only at
that time), I found some quite old blog entries about GeoToad, written
by Joey Hess (maintainer of the geotoad Debian package back then,
until late 2006).
GeoToad was removed from Debian's repositories because of the frequent
changes to the webpages at geocaching.com (some things apparently
don't change), and since Joey had stopped geocaching, there were no
further adjustments.
Somewhere around the 3.12/3.13 update, I found some old source
packages, and merged the Debian part into the GeoToad source tree.
Since I've been debianizing other packages for a while, I decided to
give it a try.
Thanks to Thomas' agreement to make the changes part of the official
GeoToad release, we now have an almost native Debian package.
Looking at the download counts, it seems to be quite popular.
There are some things which I'm not happy about yet:
- Dependencies.
The geotoad package depends on ruby which is ruby1.8 even in Debian
Squeeze. ruby1.9.1 doesn't install a /usr/bin/ruby binary (and AFAICT
there's no /etc/alternative mechanism to fake it).
ruby 1.8 has proven to be somewhat different from ruby 1.9 which is
what I'm testing against :(
- Testing opportunities.
I'm still fiddling with a setup to have both versions of ruby
available on a single machine. In the meantime, I'm limited to 1.9 -
and therefore cannot test the functionality of the package myself :( :
( Suggestions welcome.
- Feedback needed!
For the reasons presented above, I need feedback, both positive and
negative. The way Debian packages work allow for more frequent
updates, and for fixing issues that will be addressed by the next
"upstream" release long before that shows up.
If you want to comment on the Debian package, please - instead of
filing an Issue - contact me directly (@gmail.com), either via e-mail
or via GoogleTalk/XMPP. We may work it out...
that time), I found some quite old blog entries about GeoToad, written
by Joey Hess (maintainer of the geotoad Debian package back then,
until late 2006).
GeoToad was removed from Debian's repositories because of the frequent
changes to the webpages at geocaching.com (some things apparently
don't change), and since Joey had stopped geocaching, there were no
further adjustments.
Somewhere around the 3.12/3.13 update, I found some old source
packages, and merged the Debian part into the GeoToad source tree.
Since I've been debianizing other packages for a while, I decided to
give it a try.
Thanks to Thomas' agreement to make the changes part of the official
GeoToad release, we now have an almost native Debian package.
Looking at the download counts, it seems to be quite popular.
There are some things which I'm not happy about yet:
- Dependencies.
The geotoad package depends on ruby which is ruby1.8 even in Debian
Squeeze. ruby1.9.1 doesn't install a /usr/bin/ruby binary (and AFAICT
there's no /etc/alternative mechanism to fake it).
ruby 1.8 has proven to be somewhat different from ruby 1.9 which is
what I'm testing against :(
- Testing opportunities.
I'm still fiddling with a setup to have both versions of ruby
available on a single machine. In the meantime, I'm limited to 1.9 -
and therefore cannot test the functionality of the package myself :( :
( Suggestions welcome.
- Feedback needed!
For the reasons presented above, I need feedback, both positive and
negative. The way Debian packages work allow for more frequent
updates, and for fixing issues that will be addressed by the next
"upstream" release long before that shows up.
If you want to comment on the Debian package, please - instead of
filing an Issue - contact me directly (@gmail.com), either via e-mail
or via GoogleTalk/XMPP. We may work it out...
Steve8x8
Feb 28, 2011, 6:45:03 AM2/28/11
to geotoad
On Jan 17, 9:36 am, Steve8x8 <steve...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Somewhere around the 3.12/3.13 update, I found some old source
> packages, and merged the Debian part into the GeoToad source tree.
What's embarrassing: I missed an important patch (one that has to be
> Somewhere around the 3.12/3.13 update, I found some old source
> packages, and merged the Debian part into the GeoToad source tree.
applied during the building/packaging process).
3.14.3-1 needed "manual intervention" to be operational.
3.14.3-2 should fix this issue (199).
The embarrassing part is that I'm a Debian user myself, but I haven't
installed the package (there are several reasons...) - I would have
noticed
the problem months ago :(
That it took almost 7 weeks (and more than 80 downloads!) to get this
noticed about, nailed down, and fixed doesn't make it better.
> For the reasons presented above, I need feedback, both positive and
> negative. The way Debian packages work allow for more frequent
> updates, and for fixing issues that will be addressed by the next
> "upstream" release long before that shows up.
S
Steve8x8
Apr 12, 2011, 5:18:37 AM4/12/11
to geotoad
Please do no longer download the 3.14.3-1 package - it is buggy, it is
even marked
as Deprecated.
In the past six weeks, although 3.14.3-2 has been available, the old
package has been
downloaded more than a dozen times, probably via an old link still
present somewhere
on the Web - which I'm unable to find :(
S
even marked
as Deprecated.
In the past six weeks, although 3.14.3-2 has been available, the old
package has been
downloaded more than a dozen times, probably via an old link still
present somewhere
on the Web - which I'm unable to find :(
S
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