Re: [Userops] Why is it hard to package libre web applications for distros?

[Christopher Allan Webber]

Laura Arjona Reina writes:

> Hi
>
> On 2 de mayo de 2015 05:13:25 GMT+02:00, Christopher Allan Webber 
> <address@hidden> wrote:
>>Why indeed?  Discuss!
>>
>>I have my own comments to weigh in here, but admittedly I'm new to the
>>distro-packaging side, and I'd like to hear others weigh in, especially
>>those who have or have attempted packaging libre web applications for
>>distros.  How can we make things better?  How can we make things
>>easier?
>>Why is it so hard anyway?
>>
>
>>From my experience of "trying to convince people to package" (mediagoblin and 
>>pump.io):
>
> * Too many unpackaged dependencies. See 
> https://wiki.debian.org/Javascript/Nodejs/Tasks/Pump.io
>
> *  Two few people working on packaging them
>
> * Upstream developing faster, when it's packaged, it's obsolete
>
> Regards 

Heya Laura!  (And sorry for the long time waiting for reply on this!)

I think that's a 100% accurate summary.  Also, the thing I was waiting
to post till after others commented was a blogpost I had made right
before posting this to the list; "Let's Package jQuery: A Javascript
Packaging Dystopian Novella":

  http://dustycloud.org/blog/javascript-packaging-dystopia/

It's not just that javascript dependencies are unpackaged, it's also
that the way that they're packaged is fairly crazy and hard to
reproduce, at least was my finding.  Anyway, the post clarifies.

It's interesting to see actual Debian documentation of trying to package
pump.io as evidence.  I know that the MediaGoblin story isn't much
better.

There's probably something to be said for those of us building tools and
applications targeting language package managers should also take the
time to make sure our tools can work with distributions?

 - Chris