Low traffic on maintainers@

[Jonathan Craig]

Hi Dago,

On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 2:43 PM, Dagobert Michelsen <dam at opencsw.org> wrote:
> Hi Jon,
>
> Am 06.01.2014 um 19:31 schrieb Jonathan Craig <jon.craig at craigslanding.net>:
>> On Sun, Jan 5, 2014 at 10:30 AM, Ben Walton via buildfarm
>>> I was recently surprised when a user declined becoming a maintainer
>>> because even after watching the video they thought it was still dark
>>> magic. I don't have a way to gauge the skills of this person, so I
>>> can't measure the person against the problem, but it was still
>>> noteworthy.
>>>
>>
>> I must admit that my interaction with the build environment leaves me 1) amazed
>> at the flexibility and power included, 2) frustrated that every time I use it
>> I find myself relearning and/or struggling to figure out the process
>> as it seems
>> to subtly change in ways that you'll only know if you follow the dev
>> list closely and
>> commit the stuff mentioned on there to memory.
>
> That is not good. However, I have the impression that we don’t have the manpower
> to bring it to a „stable“ state.

Unfortunately I don't have the developer chops or sufficient time to
really dig into the build environment and help out on stabilizing
and/or documenting.  Its a fantastically cool infrastructure but
remains fairly opaque to me.

>> I'm also faced with moving past Solaris 10 and the only viable pkg repo is
>> unixpackages.com, the commercial follow-on to sunfreeware.  The pricing is
>> reasonable enough and my  past experience with sunfreeware leads me to
>> believe the packaging quality will be good.
>
> Do you think there would be more users if we were to offer an IPS repo?

In my opinion Solaris 10 is dead, long live Solaris 11.  SVR packaging
on Solaris 10 makes patching and upgrading a nightmare in our shop.
This is in contrast to my experience with Solaris 11, which is not all
sunshine and rainbows, but light years improvement over Solaris 10.  I
deeply desire an IPS style repo for a number of reasons; 1) it makes
upgrades and patching a breeze, 2) I'm struggling with wrapping my
mind around how to best navigate 3 packaging solutions in puppet for
Solaris (SVR, IPS, pkgutil), 3) it multiples my work when writing any
sort of inventory / compliance scripts as I have to take into account
naming in pkgutil vs SVR vs IPS.

Although I do have to wonder if my obsession with IPS is my lack of
vision because while talking with the folks at unixpackages.com the
salesperson indicated that they only have about 30 packages in IPS and
this is largely due to lack of demand.  Now, maybe if they had a full
IPS repo then their demand would be higher.

The other thing to tackle is the lack of integration between OpenCSW
packages and native OS packages.  An example of this is when using
rsync to communicate between OpenCSW systems and non-OpenCSW systems.
The rsync command can't find its counterpart on the off side unless
you explicitly specify it on the command line.  This is also true of
libraries and the need to build for an OpenCSW system by specifying
library locations.  On the other hand, Linux distro's manage this in a
more sane fashion and installing things from the fedora EPEL don't
collide with the stuff in the standard RHEL repository.  This is
accomplished by actively managing the EPEL catalog to ensure it
doesn't include any RHEL packages.  The OpenCSW solution is kinda like
a chroot solution.  Build everything in a self contained world so
dependencies only need to be considered within that world.  Given the
lack of a true package repository and the headaches of the patching
process this was required, but is it still required in an IPS world?

>> My preference is for a community supported repository solution as the
>> attention span of corporations can be limited.  My worst nightmare would be
>> to have my eggs in a blastwave type basket and have it fold underneath me.
>
> Do you mean by Blastwave-type a project where only binary packages are offered
> (like unixpackages now) ?

My blastwave comment was more about how blastwave ceased to exist
almost overnight and left people struggling to support their systems.
If the folks at unixpackages.com can no longer feed their families on
providing packages could they disappear as quickly?  At least with a
reasonable community based project (which I didn't consider blastwave
to be one) you have some insight into the viability of the community.
Also, having a full replica of the repository locally means that even
if the community goes away you have a frozen point in time available.

Jon Craig