Re: opinions of snappy packages

To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org

Cc: Bruce Byfield <bbyfield@axion.net>

Subject: Re: opinions of snappy packages

From: Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>

Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2016 11:11:02 -0700

Message-id: <[🔎] 20160619181100.GA19557@x>

Bruce Byfield wrote: > I am writing an article about the pros and cons of Ubuntu's snappy > packages, which have recently been ported to a number of major > distributions. > > If anyone has any experience with them, I would appreciate hearing their > opinions, especially about how they compare to debs. While you could definitely make technical comparisons between the .deb format and the snappy format, a distribution like Debian provides a lot more than a packaging format. The .deb format in isolation just represents an archive of files; what makes one into a real Debian package is Debian Policy. Debian without the .deb format would still be Debian; Debian without Debian Policy would just be Sourceforge, or rpmfind. People talk about new container-based packaging formats as ways for upstreams to deliver "apps" directly, bypassing distributions, supporting users who can't build software themselves (or upstreams that only provide binaries), and without dealing with distribution-specific packaging. Personally, I prefer to get almost all my software from Debian, because I *like* the consistency and curation Debian provides. I know if I get a package from Debian that every piece of it will have a FOSS license. Installing it will not break my system, or override my preferences. The files within it will install into standard locations. The software within it will integrate properly with the rest of the distribution, and with the tools I expect to use to manage it. And if anything goes wrong, I can easily report bugs in a consistent way, and expect reasonable handling of those bugs; I can also expect that the "testing" and "stable" distributions remain free of specific types of bugs. Policy defines the standards that provide consistency across the entire distribution. Consistency can absolutely be taken too far ("everything must run on everything else with every possible option!"), but it avoids unpleasant surprises. Now, that said, I absolutely do want to see better ways to package software. The overhead of packaging software does still seem higher than necessary, and massively duplicated between distributions; not all of that overhead relates to following distribution-specific policies. The prevalence of language-specific packaging ecosystems, such as npm and Cargo, suggests a need not fully addressed by distribution packaging formats. Those formats, in turn, start falling down when they need to pull in dependencies from outside their language, such as a C library, which distribution packaging handles just fine. I'd love to see a well-integrated packaging mechanism that handles all those cases, including the construction of distributions and embedded systems, language ecosystems, and "upstream direct" software delivery. But a packaging format alone won't solve that problem. Anyone thinking of building a new package ecosystem needs to think long and hard about their equivalent to Debian Policy. - Josh Triplett