3 ms·

While they're at it why not: dpkg, docker, entropy, flatpak, guix, ipkg, netpkg, opkg, pkgng, pacman, rmp, snappy? It's better to leave packaging to each distr

While they're at it why not: dpkg, docker, entropy, flatpak, guix, ipkg, netpkg, opkg, pkgng, pacman, rmp, snappy? It's better to leave packaging to each distro's maintainers rather than spending 80% of your time preparing the release packaging for every single package manager there is. Or super keen folks who want to do it specifically for your project, even then they'll only be super keen about one or two platforms.

eridius 9y ago
Two things: 1. Releasing a new binary tool without any package manager support just sucks for your users in general, because it means they're required to manually install it and most of them will probably end up with a horribly-outdated version of your tool installed for a long time because their package manager can't ever tell them that it's out of date. 2. macOS isn't a distro, so you can't just say "let your distro maintainers do it". If you don't submit to MacPorts, the only way you'll get in there is if someone else steps up to submit on your behalf, but that kinda sucks because you're package will likely end up out-of-date in MacPorts unless the volunteer maintainer is super diligent about noticing new releases and updating the Portfile. Nix is a more general-purpose packaging system, but it also suffers from this problem. In fact, in my experience, Nix packages do tend to be out of date for a while before someone notices and fixes it. FWIW I don't really expect people to actually submit their own tools to Nix anyway, because there's a fairly steep learning curve there, but it would be really awesome if people did. But submitting to MacPorts is more straightforward.
- deadbunny 9y ago
  2. macOS isn't a distro, so you can't just say "let your distro maintainers do it". If you don't submit to MacPorts, the only way you'll get in there is if someone else steps up to submit on your behalf, but that kinda sucks because you're package will likely end up out-of-date in MacPorts unless the volunteer maintainer is super diligent about noticing new releases and updating the Portfile. So by that logic I have to support mac/nix over every other system by default as they don't have maintainers? That sounds like a mac/nixos problem, not a developer problem.
  - eridius 9y ago
    If you want your tool to actually get used, you should put in at least a little effort towards trying to get it in package managers. I don't know why you're acting so surprised about that.

eridius 9y ago

Two things: 1. Releasing a new binary tool without any package manager support just sucks for your users in general, because it means they're required to manually install it and most of them will probably end up with a horribly-outdated version of your tool installed for a long time because their package manager can't ever tell them that it's out of date. 2. macOS isn't a distro, so you can't just say "let your distro maintainers do it". If you don't submit to MacPorts, the only way you'll get in there is if someone else steps up to submit on your behalf, but that kinda sucks because you're package will likely end up out-of-date in MacPorts unless the volunteer maintainer is super diligent about noticing new releases and updating the Portfile. Nix is a more general-purpose packaging system, but it also suffers from this problem. In fact, in my experience, Nix packages do tend to be out of date for a while before someone notices and fixes it. FWIW I don't really expect people to actually submit their own tools to Nix anyway, because there's a fairly steep learning curve there, but it would be really awesome if people did. But submitting to MacPorts is more straightforward.

deadbunny 9y ago
2. macOS isn't a distro, so you can't just say "let your distro maintainers do it". If you don't submit to MacPorts, the only way you'll get in there is if someone else steps up to submit on your behalf, but that kinda sucks because you're package will likely end up out-of-date in MacPorts unless the volunteer maintainer is super diligent about noticing new releases and updating the Portfile. So by that logic I have to support mac/nix over every other system by default as they don't have maintainers? That sounds like a mac/nixos problem, not a developer problem.
- eridius 9y ago
  If you want your tool to actually get used, you should put in at least a little effort towards trying to get it in package managers. I don't know why you're acting so surprised about that.