8 ms·

one thing that struck me was that the foundation for this effort was the linux distro build system. in other words, the work they put into making .net open-sour

by zem 11mo ago

one thing that struck me was that the foundation for this effort was the linux distro build system. in other words, the work they put into making .net open-source and cross-platform eventually made everyone's lives easier.

oaiey 11mo ago
I think .NET is way beyond the situation that they question their open source move. The amount of pull requests and positive outcomes for them in the last 10 years (yeah that long already) is mind blowing.
- zem 11mo ago
  yeah, I didn't mean that it was evidence the open source move was successful or valuable, more that it showed that the engineering effort that went into the open sourcing also yielded dividends for the project in general
mmitche-msft 11mo ago
Author of the post here, We wanted the option for distro maintainers to include .NET in the native distro package feeds. This means that distro maintainers have to build the product, not us, and that means creating a build system that meets their requirements. So you either end up with two build systems, or you try and unify. The only direction that it's feasible to go is towards the Linux distro model. It's the most restrictive. The good news is that the distro model is SIMPLER. It may not be the most performant. A really good distributed system with caching would be far faster. But that's not a solution that's easy to implement or compatible with distro maintainer workflows. Optimizing for simpler in this case is better though. We want the community to be able to participate in a meaningful way. Build for BSD, build for S390x, build and include in distro feeds, etc. We can't feasibly support every platform and scenario that the community wants.
- debugnik 11mo ago
  I glad to read this. One of my long-term concerns with .NET, compared to other language ecosystems, is the risk that only Microsoft people might know how to build it and port it. Is any distro actually shipping .NET SDK packages built from source?
  - lbussell 11mo ago
    Yes - Ubuntu, Alpine, Fedora, and others. [1] [1]: https://github.com/dotnet/source-build/blob/main/README.md#net-in-linux-distributions https://github.com/dotnet/source-build/blob/main/README.md#n...
    - debugnik 11mo ago
      Thanks for the reference. I had memories of having to install a Microsoft repository to install the SDK, that's an improvement.
  - mmitche-msft 11mo ago
    Yes, Canonical, RedHat, Fedora, Alpine, Centos, and Arch Linux. NixOS and nixpackages too.
    - debugnik 11mo ago
      Looks like I missed progress during the time I've been away from dotnet, thanks. I still had memories of having to install an MS repo for that.
      - johnzabroski 11mo ago
        "old man yells at clouds." :)
        debugnik 11mo ago
        Not at all! Looking at the package dates, distros have started shipping their own source builds during 2022-2024, starting with .NET 6-7.
- zem 11mo ago
  that sounds awesome. having wrestled with complex build setups I'm a big fan of simple and reproducible, though as you say there's definitely the temptation to do things to improve performance at the expense of simplicity.

by zem 11mo ago

oaiey 11mo ago

I think .NET is way beyond the situation that they question their open source move. The amount of pull requests and positive outcomes for them in the last 10 years (yeah that long already) is mind blowing.

zem 11mo ago
yeah, I didn't mean that it was evidence the open source move was successful or valuable, more that it showed that the engineering effort that went into the open sourcing also yielded dividends for the project in general

mmitche-msft 11mo ago

Author of the post here, We wanted the option for distro maintainers to include .NET in the native distro package feeds. This means that distro maintainers have to build the product, not us, and that means creating a build system that meets their requirements. So you either end up with two build systems, or you try and unify. The only direction that it's feasible to go is towards the Linux distro model. It's the most restrictive. The good news is that the distro model is SIMPLER. It may not be the most performant. A really good distributed system with caching would be far faster. But that's not a solution that's easy to implement or compatible with distro maintainer workflows. Optimizing for simpler in this case is better though. We want the community to be able to participate in a meaningful way. Build for BSD, build for S390x, build and include in distro feeds, etc. We can't feasibly support every platform and scenario that the community wants.

debugnik 11mo ago
I glad to read this. One of my long-term concerns with .NET, compared to other language ecosystems, is the risk that only Microsoft people might know how to build it and port it. Is any distro actually shipping .NET SDK packages built from source?
- lbussell 11mo ago
  Yes - Ubuntu, Alpine, Fedora, and others. [1] [1]: https://github.com/dotnet/source-build/blob/main/README.md#net-in-linux-distributions https://github.com/dotnet/source-build/blob/main/README.md#n...
  - debugnik 11mo ago
    Thanks for the reference. I had memories of having to install a Microsoft repository to install the SDK, that's an improvement.
- mmitche-msft 11mo ago
  Yes, Canonical, RedHat, Fedora, Alpine, Centos, and Arch Linux. NixOS and nixpackages too.
  - debugnik 11mo ago
    Looks like I missed progress during the time I've been away from dotnet, thanks. I still had memories of having to install an MS repo for that.
    - johnzabroski 11mo ago
      "old man yells at clouds." :)
      - debugnik 11mo ago
        Not at all! Looking at the package dates, distros have started shipping their own source builds during 2022-2024, starting with .NET 6-7.
zem 11mo ago
that sounds awesome. having wrestled with complex build setups I'm a big fan of simple and reproducible, though as you say there's definitely the temptation to do things to improve performance at the expense of simplicity.