[pacman-dev] My $0.02 on the Frugalware v.s. Arch bit...

[Alex Smith]

Hi all,

I hope you all don't mind me writing this - I'm going to try to write it in a 
way that seems neutral (i.e. not on the Arch side or the Frugalware side), 
even though I'm from the Frugal side of things. And just in case you're 
wondering why I'm writing this here instead of telling you, VMiklos, I think 
this implies to both sides, therefore belongs here.

Anyway, I'm going to start by saying bluntly what I think: This is just 
pathetic bickering. For goodness' sake, it's a package manager, not the 
world's most sacred thing.

Why do I say this? Let's start with the MaxTries patch. Aaron said that 
it was "not valid". I've searched the archives of this list, and I can't find 
any reason for this. Yet, I've found reason for this here: 
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?p=216399#216399
It would have been far more appropriate to say that here, then the problem 
with this patch could have been rectified. However, here you just said "not 
valid".

Now, about our "patch queue". This wasn't a seperate codebase, it was simply a 
repo for us to develop our patches in and find/fix bugs before submitting to 
upstream. It was never a fork - we simply never had upstream commit access, 
so we had to do this.

Personally, I don't think we wanted to fork, however it's hard to work with 
someone who says stuff is not valid without giving reason. But really, 
wouldn't it be so much easier if this was the case:

1. VMiklos creates the MaxTries patch, discusses it here.
2. Other people point out any problems/flaws with it, in a relaxed manner, 
rather than having a shouting match with 20 foot flames all around.
3. Problems get sorted after discussion, it gets committed.

The main point to that is the relaxed manner. I'll repeat what I said at the 
beginning: this is a package manager, a small application, not something so 
important that the world will blow up if something goes wrong. I really think 
that we should merge back into 1 project, rather than leading 2 seperate 
paths with 2 different APIs, and co-operate better, have fun coding, instead 
of this bickering. Having 2 APIs would just suck - someone could come along 
and create a really great libalpm frontend that works on Frugalware, and then 
the Arch users will be disappointed when it won't even compile for them. 
We've cooperated up until now in relaxed way, why change it.

But anyway, as I said in the topic, this is just my $0.02, so, choose to 
ignore it if you wish, but I seriously think that a relaxed attitude is the 
key here.

Thanks,
Alex
------
Alex Smith,
Frugalware Linux developer - http://www.frugalware.org