[gombasg at sztaki.hu: Re: [boinc_dev] Announce: BOINC server packages for Debian Lenny]

[Gabor Gombas]

I thought I can send this message to the list instead of answering
everyone in private...

My packages have other issues too that would have to be resolved before
they could be included in Debian, but those listed below are the biggest
problems IMHO.

Gabor

----- Forwarded message from Gabor Gombas <gombasg at sztaki.hu> -----

Date: Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:58:15 +0200
From: Gabor Gombas <gombasg at sztaki.hu>
To: "Fernando C. Estrada" <fcestrada at fcestrada.com>
Subject: Re: [boinc_dev] Announce: BOINC server packages for Debian Lenny

Hi!

On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 10:58:30AM -0500, Fernando C. Estrada wrote:

> Maybe You're interested to join us in the Debian BOINC Maintainers Team
> [1] to include your packages in Debian and help us with your experience.

I'm open for discussions but IMHO the BOINC server is not ready to be
included in Debian. The main reasons as I see it are:

- The client and the server cannot be built from the same source, and
  including two source tarballs that are almost-the-same-but-not-quite
  will be heavily frowned upon (if not outright vetoed) by the security team.

- Static linking is a no-no, but upstream does not like shared libraries
  and does not make any efforts to keep the API/ABI stable, so creating
  proper library packages will be a pain - I did not even try it.

- If you want to write/port new applications, you have to write
  assimilators/validators for them. However, that is only possible right
  now by downloading and modifying the BOINC sources, which is a pain.
  This means my server package is only good for deployment, but not
  really usable for development.

I intend to work on the last point because we need it in some of our
projects, but solving the first two points would require a change in
mentality upstream which seems unlikely.

Gabor

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