[IAEP] Common Sugar distribution package contents.

[Jonas Smedegaard]

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On Thu, Dec 04, 2008 at 10:53:17AM +0200, Morgan Collett wrote:
>On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 19:15, Jonas Smedegaard <dr at jones.dk> wrote:

>> On Wed, Dec 03, 2008 at 08:36:42AM -0800, C.W. Holeman II wrote: 
>> Suggestion: Encourage, but do not mandate, distributions to follow 
>> the Glucose/Fructose grouping of packages as documented at 
>> http://sugarlabs.org/go/DevelopmentTeam/Source_Code and ecourage (not 
>> mandate) releasing one of the following (prioritized - first is 
>> best):
>
>Sure, the whole point behind Glucose/Fructose is to have a collection 
>of releases that are done together, tested to work together, and easy 
>to package because the tarballs are all in a known location.

Then we perfectly agree :-)

I did expect that, but felt that the earlier dialogue was ambiguous.


>>   1) All branches (0.81, 0.82 and 0.83 currently)
>>   2) All stable branches (0.82 currently)
>>   3) Only latest stable branch (0.82 currently)
>>
>>
>> This is releated to the recent discussion on whether Sugarlabs would 
>> rather that Debian-edu) rip out and avoid Sugar from its next release 
>> than release with software not matching latest stable branch.
>
>It is purely a recommendation, based on the presumed support issues. 
>Sugar Labs is basically a community, more than it is an organisation. 
>The community was asked, and the community responded.
>
>If the likely answer to every "problem" with the debian sugar packages 
>is "oh, you're using an old unsupported unstable development version of 
>Sugar, upgrade to 0.82" then is there any point in shipping 0.81? Will 
>anybody actually use the 0.81 packages for a deployment? It's your 
>call.

I wholeheartedly agree that it is better to ship "optimal version" than 
"deprecated version". The question (that I did not express myself, and I 
would not express such question exactly due to my impression of this 
community) was another, however: The question was "deprecated version" 
or "nothing".

I'd rather have a million users get that "oh, please upgrade" response 
than those 1 million users unable to try out Sugar as part of their 
existing, already shipped system.

Example: Brazil is currently preparing arollout of literally millions of 
computers at the moment, shipped with a derivative of Debian. If the 
government decides to support Sugar as part of their rollout, it could 
sure be added from some other source than officially released by Debian. 
But until the government "sees the light" those upcoming users without 
Internet access (which is quite a few, as I understand it) are "stock" 
with whatever is distributed by default. It could be nice if they could 
try out even an "outdated" Sugar without waiting for their government to 
officially endorse that specific piece of software.


Let me repeat: I fully agree that "latest stable" is better than "old 
abandoned but somewhat working". But if Debian "Lenny" was released 
today, that was not an option!


  - Jonas

- -- 
* Jonas Smedegaard - idealist og Internet-arkitekt
* Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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