4 ms·

I don't know about Alpine specifically, but many distributions put a lot of red tape around becoming a maintainer (for good reasons). I just don't want to get i

I don't know about Alpine specifically, but many distributions put a lot of red tape around becoming a maintainer (for good reasons). I just don't want to get into it. AUR from Arch Linux has an interesting take on this — anyone can become a maintainer in a matter of minutes — and while that results in some low-quality packages and the expectation that you're supposed to review everything you install (which is easy though thanks to the excellent package format, which Alpine also uses with minor modifications), most of them are fine, and AUR gets a lot more maintainers than any other distribution. You also don't put any obligations on yourself by becoming a maintainer on AUR — you can always orphan a package in less than a minute, no questions asked. Some users actually place new packages on AUR and orphan them right away. If it's of any use, it usually get a volunteer maintainer within a few days.

fluix 3y ago
I've found packaging for Alpine has been similarly easy. There is a review process in the sense that you file an MR instead of committing directly, but my experience has been really quick and easy. Also, not everyone with commit access does this, but psykose would also fix minor issues like indentation without requesting changes and doing the whole back and forth. I really appreciated it and noticed the changes for next time. The community and main repositories have some stability guarantees but that doesn't stop you from orphaning the package.
freedomben 3y ago
Fedora is particularly bad at what you describe. It's basically just impossible for somebody who isn't already in the system (or doesn't know somebody who is already in the system) to get into the system. Between hard to find documentation and requirements like, "just join the mailing list and ask for people to sponsor you" (which nobody wants to do when they don't already know you) you have to really want to do it. I could have easily maintained several packages that I built, but after sinking 4 hours into it (building the packages only took an hour or so), in the end I just threw them on my COPR and called it a day. I'm not going to spin my wheels trying to jump ridiculous non-technical hurdles and try to navigate needlessly opaque processes.
- teddyh 3y ago
  In Debian at least you can become a Debian “Maintainer” more easily than you can become a Debian Developer.
  - bfrog 3y ago
    Sure, but building debian packages is akin to needing to read lord of the rings before doing anything. There's so many deb helpers and various files/file formats that need to be understood. How and where files should go. It's horrendously complex compared to PKGBUILD and makepkg.
    - secondcoming 3y ago
      Yup, been there and walked away from it all.
    - teddyh 3y ago
      It’s not great, true, but it’s not quite that bad. There are tools to generate templates, and “lintian” will complain about the package for most everything which is possible to get wrong.
- ezekiel68 3y ago
  > Fedora is particularly bad at what you describe. Thank goodness. There is no other free Linux distro out there which gives the benefits of both a stable release with great support for most of the latest hardware AND rapid package/kernel updates (approaching a rolling release). This must not be easy since its so rare. Whatever they are doing regarding maintainership is working very well from what I can tell.
  - freedomben 3y ago
    > There is no other free Linux distro out there which gives the benefits of both a stable release with great support for most of the latest hardware AND rapid package/kernel updates (approaching a rolling release). This has nothing to do with that. They could absolutely make it easier for new people without harming their quality. For God's sake just better documentation would help, and I don't see how they're going to lose hardware support because they wrote one canonical page with all the info you need. The process should be more of a checklist to complete, and less of post-crime forensic investigation where tons of details and tips are missing and people have to draw flow charts and hunt for missing information just to figure out what the next step should be. Your reply is a (very) shallow dismissal of an actual issue and (assuming you're not alone) probably the reason this is such a problem in the first place.
raverbashing 3y ago
but you know what? I think Alpine is right If you see the distros with more red tape ( cough debian cough ) , you have people "reigning in their little Package Kingdom" which also can end up with orphaned (or at least severely neglected) packages
bombcar 3y ago
Gentoo makes it pretty easy to add an "overlay" to get packages that someone makes, and if they get steam it becomes simple to import them into "mainstream". ~x86 helps too, masking a package is a good way to say "maybe tested, maybe not so much".
bfrog 3y ago
It's really hard to beat the PKGBUILD + makepkg ease of packaging. I really hope nix flakes kind of become simple and easy as time goes on. They kind of are, but nix having so many features and flexibility also means that super simple makepkg type program is sort of intertwined in a few other things. Ideally? nix build someflake would just work. Reality is there's a few hoops at the moment which is kind of a disappointing aspect. If nix build someflake Just Worked I could see a lot more ad-hoc type contributions happening. Better still unlike makepkg its very easy to customize a package so presumably fewer same-but-slight-variant type things tha aur has a lot of would be consolidated.

fluix 3y ago

I've found packaging for Alpine has been similarly easy. There is a review process in the sense that you file an MR instead of committing directly, but my experience has been really quick and easy. Also, not everyone with commit access does this, but psykose would also fix minor issues like indentation without requesting changes and doing the whole back and forth. I really appreciated it and noticed the changes for next time. The community and main repositories have some stability guarantees but that doesn't stop you from orphaning the package.

freedomben 3y ago

Fedora is particularly bad at what you describe. It's basically just impossible for somebody who isn't already in the system (or doesn't know somebody who is already in the system) to get into the system. Between hard to find documentation and requirements like, "just join the mailing list and ask for people to sponsor you" (which nobody wants to do when they don't already know you) you have to really want to do it. I could have easily maintained several packages that I built, but after sinking 4 hours into it (building the packages only took an hour or so), in the end I just threw them on my COPR and called it a day. I'm not going to spin my wheels trying to jump ridiculous non-technical hurdles and try to navigate needlessly opaque processes.

teddyh 3y ago
In Debian at least you can become a Debian “Maintainer” more easily than you can become a Debian Developer.
- bfrog 3y ago
  Sure, but building debian packages is akin to needing to read lord of the rings before doing anything. There's so many deb helpers and various files/file formats that need to be understood. How and where files should go. It's horrendously complex compared to PKGBUILD and makepkg.
  - secondcoming 3y ago
    Yup, been there and walked away from it all.
  - teddyh 3y ago
    It’s not great, true, but it’s not quite that bad. There are tools to generate templates, and “lintian” will complain about the package for most everything which is possible to get wrong.
ezekiel68 3y ago
> Fedora is particularly bad at what you describe. Thank goodness. There is no other free Linux distro out there which gives the benefits of both a stable release with great support for most of the latest hardware AND rapid package/kernel updates (approaching a rolling release). This must not be easy since its so rare. Whatever they are doing regarding maintainership is working very well from what I can tell.
- freedomben 3y ago
  > There is no other free Linux distro out there which gives the benefits of both a stable release with great support for most of the latest hardware AND rapid package/kernel updates (approaching a rolling release). This has nothing to do with that. They could absolutely make it easier for new people without harming their quality. For God's sake just better documentation would help, and I don't see how they're going to lose hardware support because they wrote one canonical page with all the info you need. The process should be more of a checklist to complete, and less of post-crime forensic investigation where tons of details and tips are missing and people have to draw flow charts and hunt for missing information just to figure out what the next step should be. Your reply is a (very) shallow dismissal of an actual issue and (assuming you're not alone) probably the reason this is such a problem in the first place.

raverbashing 3y ago

but you know what? I think Alpine is right If you see the distros with more red tape ( cough debian cough ) , you have people "reigning in their little Package Kingdom" which also can end up with orphaned (or at least severely neglected) packages

bombcar 3y ago

Gentoo makes it pretty easy to add an "overlay" to get packages that someone makes, and if they get steam it becomes simple to import them into "mainstream". ~x86 helps too, masking a package is a good way to say "maybe tested, maybe not so much".

bfrog 3y ago

It's really hard to beat the PKGBUILD + makepkg ease of packaging. I really hope nix flakes kind of become simple and easy as time goes on. They kind of are, but nix having so many features and flexibility also means that super simple makepkg type program is sort of intertwined in a few other things. Ideally? nix build someflake would just work. Reality is there's a few hoops at the moment which is kind of a disappointing aspect. If nix build someflake Just Worked I could see a lot more ad-hoc type contributions happening. Better still unlike makepkg its very easy to customize a package so presumably fewer same-but-slight-variant type things tha aur has a lot of would be consolidated.