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> I can totally understand the argument that I should track down these people and ask them to update the package. You shouldn't even need to track them down.

> I can totally understand the argument that I should track down these people and ask them to update the package. You shouldn't even need to track them down. If it's a packaging and distribution channel you've used before, you should already be in communication with the package maintainer. Yes, it's possible that there could be a problem with a package you didn't know existed, but such cases are very much the exception. Even then, the right thing to do would probably be to suggest a better-supported alternative and/or introduce yourself to the people maintaining that package. > It could be that they tried several times to update their package It could be. We're giving rather a lot of benefit of the doubt to the developers, aren't we? Why not give some to the packagers? They have their own standards they need to maintain, for the sake of their users. As often as not, packaging delays are the result of developers just throwing stuff over the wall for someone else to fix up. We need to proactively fight against that tendency. > they "learned" it was best to let the package users demand updates, not the suppliers. Again, it's not either/or. Both developers and packagers need to be part of that conversation. Neither gets to walk away and say it's somebody else's problem. As always in open source, collaboration is critical.

dalke 11y ago
> Yes, it's possible that there could be a problem with a package you didn't know existed My limited experience may well be the exception, but I'll bring it up anyway. I wrote an RSS module in 2003. Someone else later added it to PyPI, the Python indexer. It has also been distributed by multiple packaging systems. I had no clue. No packager has ever said anything about it to me. Looking now, it's distributed by Gentoo, Debian, Slackware, Ubuntu, and more. It's also used in PyMediaRSS2Gen, dilbert-rss, and loads more packages. It took me two days to write that package, and another few days of maintenance in the 12 years. Until now I believed this hand-off mechanism, mediated by PyPI, was the way to go. Because it would take me much longer to interact with all of those distributions than to write the code in the first place! > Why not give some [doubt] to the packagers? Because the statement you made earlier, "They need to work with package maintainers, fixing (and not re-creating) problems that make packaging difficult. Anyone who can't do that, or isn't willing to, can't claim to have "learned all they can" about software delivery, as I see in the first paragraph of the other Taskwarrior article posted today." gave no doubt to the developers.

dalke 11y ago

> Yes, it's possible that there could be a problem with a package you didn't know existed My limited experience may well be the exception, but I'll bring it up anyway. I wrote an RSS module in 2003. Someone else later added it to PyPI, the Python indexer. It has also been distributed by multiple packaging systems. I had no clue. No packager has ever said anything about it to me. Looking now, it's distributed by Gentoo, Debian, Slackware, Ubuntu, and more. It's also used in PyMediaRSS2Gen, dilbert-rss, and loads more packages. It took me two days to write that package, and another few days of maintenance in the 12 years. Until now I believed this hand-off mechanism, mediated by PyPI, was the way to go. Because it would take me much longer to interact with all of those distributions than to write the code in the first place! > Why not give some [doubt] to the packagers? Because the statement you made earlier, "They need to work with package maintainers, fixing (and not re-creating) problems that make packaging difficult. Anyone who can't do that, or isn't willing to, can't claim to have "learned all they can" about software delivery, as I see in the first paragraph of the other Taskwarrior article posted today." gave no doubt to the developers.