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I have a naive question (I'm a long time Debian user, but never really tried to contribute): why isn't all the Debian in a single git repository? I'm not sugges

by forty 8y ago

I have a naive question (I'm a long time Debian user, but never really tried to contribute): why isn't all the Debian in a single git repository? I'm not suggesting to vendor all the third party code but only all the packaging information, like, say, libreelec does (and I assume many others)

regularfry 8y ago
The simplest answer is that it predates repositories of that size being a practical idea, and it's not changed because of institutional inertia.
rleigh 8y ago
It's all down to history. When Debian was started, individual maintainers owned their packages completely, and they were often not kept under version control. This was a practical necessity for distributed development in the mid '90s. They uploaded the source and binaries when they uploaded a new Debian package version, but the actual source packages weren't necessarily under any sort of version control other than the Debian archive storing the uploaded versions. Today, keeping packages under version control is considered good practice, but even today it's not mandatory as far as I'm aware. While other systems, like the BSD ports, are in a single repository, this complete separation has had its advantages. The system is almost completely modular, with all the interdependencies explicitly documented. It's easy to add third-party packages. Look how easy it is to add extra BSD ports packages. You have to fork the entire thing because the repo doesn't just include the packages, it includes all the build infrastructure. This makes building third-party ports a bit more of a pain, because it wasn't considered important, while for Debian it was a fundamental design goal. On the flip side, making a patch for the BSD ports is the same for every single package and it takes just a few minutes to attach it to a bugzilla ticket.
jlundberg 8y ago
Debian actually vendors all third party code. Their source archive is the best place to search if you are looking for old but good software that is not available any more from the original author.

by forty 8y ago

regularfry 8y ago

The simplest answer is that it predates repositories of that size being a practical idea, and it's not changed because of institutional inertia.

rleigh 8y ago

It's all down to history. When Debian was started, individual maintainers owned their packages completely, and they were often not kept under version control. This was a practical necessity for distributed development in the mid '90s. They uploaded the source and binaries when they uploaded a new Debian package version, but the actual source packages weren't necessarily under any sort of version control other than the Debian archive storing the uploaded versions. Today, keeping packages under version control is considered good practice, but even today it's not mandatory as far as I'm aware. While other systems, like the BSD ports, are in a single repository, this complete separation has had its advantages. The system is almost completely modular, with all the interdependencies explicitly documented. It's easy to add third-party packages. Look how easy it is to add extra BSD ports packages. You have to fork the entire thing because the repo doesn't just include the packages, it includes all the build infrastructure. This makes building third-party ports a bit more of a pain, because it wasn't considered important, while for Debian it was a fundamental design goal. On the flip side, making a patch for the BSD ports is the same for every single package and it takes just a few minutes to attach it to a bugzilla ticket.

jlundberg 8y ago

Debian actually vendors all third party code. Their source archive is the best place to search if you are looking for old but good software that is not available any more from the original author.