Chris's Wiki :: blog/sysadmin/BuildingPackagesFlaws Commentshttps://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/sysadmin/BuildingPackagesFlaws?atomcommentsDWiki2020-11-12T16:58:36ZRecent comments in Chris's Wiki :: blog/sysadmin/BuildingPackagesFlaws.By db48x on /blog/sysadmin/BuildingPackagesFlawstag:CSpace:blog/sysadmin/BuildingPackagesFlaws:c0171aaac6fa3f11663989369f786c4dc6679a8ddb48xhttp://db48x.net/<div class="wikitext"><p>Some systems are designed to eliminate some of the effort of building an distributing customized packages, specifically Nix and Guix. Both let you create a new package that inherits from an existing one, allowing you to add your patches to the base release. Both let you substitute your version of the package for the default package whenever the default is called for. Your customized package will be built from source in precisely the same environment that the base package was built in, ensuring that it can't get messed up by mistakes along the way. Your production machines can download the binary package in exactly the same manner as the base package (although from your own file server, of course). They basically make your custom packages first-class citizens in the package manager.</p>
<p>That still leaves you the undeniable effort of maintaining your fork, but at least it minimizes or eliminates all the rest of the work of making sure your systems all use your custom package.</p>
<p>On the other hand, switching costs are still nonzero…</p>
</div>2020-11-12T16:58:36ZBy Chris Siebenmann on /blog/sysadmin/BuildingPackagesFlawstag:CSpace:blog/sysadmin/BuildingPackagesFlaws:caff81a6a4171b19686e6eae2863ea7c8c1f7314Chris Siebenmann<div class="wikitext"><p>I don't think that snaps and flatpaks deal with the fundamental problems
of directly using upstream; they just save you compiling things yourself.
If anything they make it potentially worse, since upstream is likely to
only supply their releases, not patched versions. The core problem is that
the upstream release is not always suitable to be used directly, either
because it has flaws or because it has problematic changes to upgrade to.</p>
</div>2020-11-12T16:23:34ZBy sam on /blog/sysadmin/BuildingPackagesFlawstag:CSpace:blog/sysadmin/BuildingPackagesFlaws:84103742ce3693f66044bd8b2eb1c083a57b8e2bsam<div class="wikitext"><p>How do you feel about flatpaks and snaps directly from upstream? Those would seem to be this principle taken to the logical conclusion - after all, who has deeper experience with a program than its authors themselves?</p>
<p>I'm not sure it's an entirely bad way to build systems, but it <em>is</em> definitely a fundamental deviation from the traditional Linux model of curated package sets.</p>
</div>2020-11-12T14:01:20Z