Re: [tlug] Into the ring: distro wars reducks

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Lewske Wada writes:

 > If you want to use things like "package" that's called in FreeBSD
 > in Darwin, you should go use fink instead where you will have
 > binary installations.

But I don't want a binary installation (except on the Netwanker, which
has a 650MHz processor and bus and I/O speeds to match, and even there
I'm gathering enthusiasm for a cross-development environment because
some packages I'd like to have aren't provided for Linux/Araneo).

Besides, I haven't tried Fink in years, but last I did it really
sucked.  Packages with strict dependencies would get uploaded, but
then the dependencies wouldn't appear for weeks.  Maintainers would
put in features I didn't want and leave out really important ones (and
not just to me), because they didn't really care about the package but
wanted brownie points for being maintainer or something.  Maybe the
project has gotten its act together since then, but if you use a
source distribution you can always intervene in the build process,
with less work (often very near zero, if you're familiar with the
package in question) than trying to deal with problems in binary
packages or mix local source with a binary-oriented distribution.

The big advantage to Gentoo is that the common interventions are
codified as USE flags.

 > Debian provides decent package management system for both
 > binaries and sources as well.

With a ten-year release process, they should.  I use Debian stable
where I can, because it really is stable.  But then on top of that I
use up-to-date versions of mission-critical packages (apache, mailman,
Postfix, SpamAssassin).  That doesn't work once you get into the
workstation world because of proliferating dependencies in anything
GUI.

BTW, don't say "decent" and "Debian" in the same breath to an Emacs
maintainer.  The Debian Emacs Policy is to package management as the
Hatoyama Administration is to fiscal responsibility.