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I don't want anybody to get the wrong ideea from your post. Linux package managers solved the software distribution problem 20 years ago and are the most stable

I don't want anybody to get the wrong ideea from your post. Linux package managers solved the software distribution problem 20 years ago and are the most stable, feature full and elegant way to ship into production. You have reproducible builds, dependency handling, clean removal, rollback, exepction handling, logs, automated upgrades, etc. The problem is complex so the solution is not one youtube view away from being understood. Deb packages helped Debian to ship tens of thousands of software packages with frequent updates for years and years with few maintainers. I am sorry to say this, but calling it a mess says a lot more about you than about the package formats.

ordu 5y ago
You said it yourself: they solve a damn great heap of problems. The heap is so great that it cannot be explained clearly. You forgot to say, that it was not a single solution, but a long painful road, not every solution you mentioned was available 20 years ago. So it is a mess of a lot of solutions condensed over a period of 30 years. I did look into two of such package management systems (deb and ebuild), and I'm happy to use any. To keep my system up to date they are fine, but not for anything else. It needs a lot of domain specific knowledge to make a package. Knowledge that is useless outside of the world of packaging. Knowledge detoriates when not used, and every time like the first time. Grr. > I am sorry to say this, but calling it a mess says a lot more about you than about the package formats. You shouldn't feel sorry saying it. I said it already. Though I used different words, but it is essentialy the same idea: there should be special people to make .deb packages. Probably you tried to say that it is me who is special in that regard? Can I advise you to can check your intuition? How many developers bother with preparing .deb packages? Is it 10% or 90%? How many github repos contain .deb? Most of developers who doesn't prepare .deb packages are like me. They would use flatpack, or some other format allowing to capture an environment easily. But they wouldn't use deb.
- trabant00 5y ago
  I agree with your facts, I disagree with your perspective and I respect your good faith. As such I will stop arguing and offer something that you might find useful in the future: arch linux PKGBUILD (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PKGBUILD https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PKGBUILD) - an order of magnitude simpler than debs. You can learn this in a day and you can use them on any distribution.
  - ordu 5y ago
    I prefer cargo. It works with rust only, it have no heaps of solved problems, but it just works. In any case I stopped doing system-wide installs of packages from outside of an official repository of my distro. No alien packages, no overlays. If I need something that is not in the Portage, I'd build it myself and I'd install it locally into ~/.local. This way is even better with cargo.

ordu 5y ago

You said it yourself: they solve a damn great heap of problems. The heap is so great that it cannot be explained clearly. You forgot to say, that it was not a single solution, but a long painful road, not every solution you mentioned was available 20 years ago. So it is a mess of a lot of solutions condensed over a period of 30 years. I did look into two of such package management systems (deb and ebuild), and I'm happy to use any. To keep my system up to date they are fine, but not for anything else. It needs a lot of domain specific knowledge to make a package. Knowledge that is useless outside of the world of packaging. Knowledge detoriates when not used, and every time like the first time. Grr. > I am sorry to say this, but calling it a mess says a lot more about you than about the package formats. You shouldn't feel sorry saying it. I said it already. Though I used different words, but it is essentialy the same idea: there should be special people to make .deb packages. Probably you tried to say that it is me who is special in that regard? Can I advise you to can check your intuition? How many developers bother with preparing .deb packages? Is it 10% or 90%? How many github repos contain .deb? Most of developers who doesn't prepare .deb packages are like me. They would use flatpack, or some other format allowing to capture an environment easily. But they wouldn't use deb.

trabant00 5y ago
I agree with your facts, I disagree with your perspective and I respect your good faith. As such I will stop arguing and offer something that you might find useful in the future: arch linux PKGBUILD (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PKGBUILD https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PKGBUILD) - an order of magnitude simpler than debs. You can learn this in a day and you can use them on any distribution.
- ordu 5y ago
  I prefer cargo. It works with rust only, it have no heaps of solved problems, but it just works. In any case I stopped doing system-wide installs of packages from outside of an official repository of my distro. No alien packages, no overlays. If I need something that is not in the Portage, I'd build it myself and I'd install it locally into ~/.local. This way is even better with cargo.