[Pkg-erlang-devel] CouchDB packaging updates

[Sam Bisbee]

On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 10:11:57PM -0500, Chad MILLER wrote:
> On 11/10/2009 08:53 PM, Sam Bisbee wrote:
>> On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 02:55:03PM -0500, Chad MILLER wrote:
>>> Hi, I work near Elliot, and I don't mind elucidating some of the details
>>> that he thinks are offtopic here.  For most replies about our rationale
>>> and usage internals, perhaps we should go off-list; I do not mind.
>>
>> Hello Chad,
>>
>> Thank you very much for your reply, it was quite clear and it sounds like
>> you're doing some interesting things with couchdb. I'm quite happy to hear that
>> you're trying to spread couchdb use.
>>
>> However, your packaging and use of couchdb _does_ change the natural way things
>> are done with couchdb. I'm not saying that what you are trying to accomplish is
>> right or wrong, I'm just saying that it's not what native couchdb does. That
>> makes it a fork, regardless of whether you change the code or not.
>
> I'm running stock couchdb manually, and specifying a different data  
> directory and specifying that it use the magical port "0".  That sounds  
> "native" to me, and there is nothing at all I need from couchdb  
> developers.  There are no couchdb changes to take to an upstream, and  
> I'm frankly at a loss to imagine what else you think I should do.
>
> The only thing on my wish list is that people using this not waste  
> memory or boot time on a daemon that they're not using.

Okay, then maybe that's where my real problem is. If they're not using couchdb,
then why do they have it installed? And if they're temporarily not using it,
then why can't they configure it to not run at boot (remove the init script,
etc.)? I don't think it's a stretch in users' minds that if they install a
program and forget about it that it'll still be there, doing its job.

If there are two things that get my blood boiling with packages it's when
either they (1) "depend" on everything including the baby and the bath water in
the repository, or (2) break everything into tiny packages (ex., what's the
point in having a dev package without man files or debug symbols?).

This scenario appears to be in the second category for me. 

As for my upstream comments, I was under the impression that source code,
config files, etc. had been changed. I came under this impression when Sergei
put forth a list of things that would need to be done to have a per-user
couchdb in his eyes (I appended to it) and the response was "we do all that" -
if all those things are done, then code or config changes had to have been
made. Hence my repeated spiels about sending such changes upstream.

-- 
Sam Bisbee