[Freedombox-discuss] Owncloud, Piwigo, Gogs, Matrix, ...

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Quoting Stefan Monnier (2017-06-22 14:18:53)
>> Well, I see no other way to run code that is unmaintainable by 
>> Debian, than either a) have someone else maintain it or b) run it 
>> unmaintained.
> 
> That's right.  But I also wonder what people choose in practice.
> I guess it falls between:
> - don't use it.
> - install it once by hand, then leave it to rot.
> - use the developer-provided .deb (when available).
> - use someone else's server.

FreedomBox is about self-hosting services "dead simple" - i.e. *zero* 
administration.

Options where maintenance is done by the user is therefore not 
FreedomBox but plain Debian, and therefore better discussed at one of 
the general Debian mailinglists for users or sysadmins.


>> Personally I most of the time choose to *not* run services that 
>> Debian cannot maintain, because I find the task Debian does real and 
>> not replaceable by upstreams or myself.
>
> That's also usually my choice.  But there's got to be a better solution.
> 
> Basically, I'm thinking that we could have a half-way between Debian 
> and hand-maintenance: have a "sub-Debian" repository with packages 
> that aren't well packaged (hence not acceptable for Debian), but that 
> are regularly updated.  I'd expect this repository would contain 
> packages that closely follow the packaging style of the upstream 
> developer. I guess it could be called "ugly" or "messy", and handled a 
> bit like "experimental".

Many such places exist and are called "Debian derivatives": 
https://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/Census

I recommend to check the existing ones before creating yet another.

Personally I believe time packaging code is better spent in Debian than 
(more "messy" as you call it) outside of Debian.  Exactly because code 
unfit for Debian is less likely to be long-term maintainable, and the 
time invested in packaging therefore more likely to be wasted.

That said, I certainly encourage those believing in the value of such 
effort to join forces and create a Debian derivative for "messy" 
extensions to FreedomBox!


 - Jonas

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

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