[Pkg-javascript-devel] hello, plus node packaging questions.

[Andrew Baxter]

On 31/01/12 12:25, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> On 12-01-31 at 11:46am, Andrew Baxter wrote:
>> what are the reasons for wanting separate debian packages for each
>> dependent library of a program like the buddycloud web client? I'm
>> assuming the idea is to reduce code duplication between packages, but
>> I'd rather have a definite answer than assume something. Some of the
>> webclient dependencies are quite small, so if this is the reason, it
>> could make sense to include these in the webclient package at first
>> and work on packaging the bigger libraries. For example,
>> 'normalizecss' is included as a git submodule, and maintained as a
>> separate project, but only includes a single short css file.
> Yes, code duplication, which relates to security, convenience and
> efficiency...
>
> You argue from the POV of this single application, buddycloud-client.
> Try step back a little to get a broader perspective: Users of Debian
> benefit in multiple ways from reusable code appearing as such.  Some
> users run DEbian-packaged applications and don't care much how
> dependencies are resolved, but others run locally hacked together
> applications and use Debian-packaged libraries.
>
> By packaging shared code as shared code, we encourage use of shared
> code.  Among our users, and also among developers of Debian: when you
> decide to stuff a piece of shareable code into a consuming package, you
> essentially hide that code as shareable, and it is highly likely that
> the next developer will do the same for the exact same piece of code.
>
> Or put it differently: Did you verify all existing Debian-packaged Node
> code for existing use of those small chunks, before proposing to stuff
> it into buddycloud-client?  Are you certain you are not _introducing_
> code duplication by doing so? ;-)
>
>

It's OK - I get the point; it's just it helps to have a definite answer 
as to the reasons when I'm thinking about marginal cases like normalizecss.

>> I was also wondering whether the packages you're building for nodejs
>> are built to work with npm? For example this would be useful for
>> someone who needs to install some node modules not yet in debian - npm
>> would notice the ones already included and only install the extra
>> modules which are needed. This is something I can probably answer for
>> myself by looking at existing packages though.
> npm is package management for end-users.  dpkg is package management for
> sysadmins.  Ideally npm would detect Node "packages" already installed
> via dpkg (but I don't think it does now) but it does not make sense the
> other way around.
>
> Perhaps npm could benefit from a certain hinting provided by dpkg
> packages Node code.  I am unaware of such need, so someone need to
> discover and document that (if it exist)...

OK. If I get the energy, I'll look into how hard it would be to make npm 
detect installed debian packages.

thanks,

andy