[arch-general] Upstream bugs, patches

[Xavier]

Nagy Gabor wrote:
> No big deal. (I've rebuilt it.) But if you also think, that it should be
> rebuilt, then why is sitting that buggy package in repo? I have the feeling
> that the main reason of "no patch" is minimizing the
> developer-responsibility, which is in fact understandable. To be
> honest, I don't like "you can do it" answers. Probably I could use
> LinuxFromScratch (or I could eat a spider;-), but I don't want it. I
> expect from my distro at least working packages.
> 

LFS isn't vanilla either, the goal is to get a working system in the 
end, so they patch when needed.
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/stable/chapter03/patches.html
However, it's probably as vanilla as possible, quite like Arch in my 
opinion.

> Back to the subject.
> I can also understand some reasons of "no-patch" viewpoint. Basically
> it is not a good thing, that distroX manipulates radically foo
> app without telling the users, that we "hacked lots of things here", and
> users blame the developer instead of packager. (That's why I think
> end-users should send bug reports to packagers; even if the package is
> not patched at all, a not-experienced user may not recognize that this
> is a packaging bug, and sends some spam to the original developers.)
> But I don't ask 20 patches for each packages, I ask "working packages"
> only, and "ratio over dogmas" in some cases.
> 
> And I don't hear much complaints about the distro-patching from
> developers (exceptions: Jörg Schilling for example). A bit going
> further, I think that "patchability" is one of the main power of open
> source; and I see nothing wrong (fundamentally) in the common practice,
> that distros supply "mini-fork" packages to satisfy their users' taste
> in the heterogeneous linux community (some users like eye-candy
> others are minimalistic etc). Usually I enjoy _usable_ "vanilla"
> packages (that's why I am AL user).
> 

Again, when there is a really unusable / broken package, it's very 
likely not because of the vanilla philosophy, but because of the lack of 
time of developers.
And as far as I am concerned, Arch provides working packages, so I would 
say it's doing pretty well overall. There are probably exceptions that 
confirm the rule, but that's life, nothing is perfect :)