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#1 2008-04-12 17:43:23

GuyNamedRob
Member
Registered: 2008-04-04
Posts: 15

a straight up, no patches distro?

Hi,

I guess my main discussion question, as this is "Arch Discussion" is:  Is a true "no patches, no configuration alterations" distro possible?

I certainly hope that Arch will evolve the way it has been going, and I have to say that I hope that Arch will successfully move toward "none to minimal patches" package repositories (which appears to me to be one of the hotbutton issues right now).  While harder on the newbs like myself, I think it's important to have a distro that strives to let original, straight from source, unconfigured, pre-compiled packages speak for themselves.  To me that's a key component to this whole FOSS movement. 

Rob


NOTE:  This is edited, so the material referenced in the following responce about "Hi to everyone" has been removed and moved to the reccomended thread.  Thanks.

Last edited by GuyNamedRob (2008-04-12 20:02:05)

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#2 2008-04-12 18:56:34

Mr.Elendig
#archlinux@freenode channel op
From: The intertubes
Registered: 2004-11-07
Posts: 4,094

Re: a straight up, no patches distro?

Edit: since the op edited his post tongue
=begin
Not to ruin your party, but: The official "say hi to everyone" thread
=end

---------------------------------------------------

Here is a small note about arch and patching:

http://phraktured.net/patching-patching-patching.html

Last edited by Mr.Elendig (2008-04-12 20:25:41)


Evil #archlinux@libera.chat channel op and general support dude.
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#3 2008-04-12 18:57:55

finferflu
Forum Fellow
From: Manchester, UK
Registered: 2007-06-21
Posts: 1,899
Website

Re: a straight up, no patches distro?

Mr.Elendig wrote:

Not to ruin your party, but: The official "say hi to everyone" thread

Party-pooper! tongue

Anyway, welcome home GuyNamedRob big_smile


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"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." -- A. de Saint-Exupery

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#4 2008-04-12 20:15:42

shining
Pacman Developer
Registered: 2006-05-10
Posts: 2,043

Re: a straight up, no patches distro?

GuyNamedRob wrote:

I guess my main discussion question, as this is "Arch Discussion" is:  Is a true "no patches, no configuration alterations" distro possible?

Play with LFS to answer that question.
There is also that quick link, but it doesn't explain anything :
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/vie … tches.html
So you have to go through the book and build a full system to know which patches / config alteration are required and why.

But even if a strict no patch / no config alteration was not possible, it would still be possible to try staying as close as possible to it.

And here is an interesting post on the topic, very recent and from Arch overlord :
http://phraktured.net/patching-patching-patching.html


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#5 2008-04-13 00:38:10

pyther
Member
Registered: 2008-01-21
Posts: 1,395
Website

Re: a straight up, no patches distro?

For the most part this is what arch should be, and this is what arch use to be. Now it looks like arch is gonna be this way again smile


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#6 2008-04-13 00:39:54

Misfit138
Misfit Emeritus
From: USA
Registered: 2006-11-27
Posts: 4,189

Re: a straight up, no patches distro?

Arch doesn't seem heavily patched to me. You could do a lot worse.
The kernel seems like one of the main packages to have some significant patches. Vanilla is good. I look forward to more vanilla.

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#7 2008-04-13 01:12:42

fwojciec
Member
Registered: 2007-05-20
Posts: 1,411

Re: a straight up, no patches distro?

Try Crux is you want a more extreme version of "none to minimal patches" policy than Arch.  Where Arch "tries to Keep It Simple" Crux does.  Although, if you're anything like me, you'll just end up having to maintain your own ports tree with customized/patched versions of default ports... YMMV wink

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#8 2008-04-13 02:20:56

bender02
Member
From: UK
Registered: 2007-02-04
Posts: 1,328

Re: a straight up, no patches distro?

I agree with Misfit - I don't think it's so much heavily patched. The main examples of packages patched more than necessary were kernel, qt and xorg. Now I wonder if users who rant along the lines "oh we're so not KISS anymore as in the good old days" actually *have problems* with patching.

Don't get me wrong, I'm fine with 'patch as little as possible' philosophy, I just don't understand why users complain. Of course, from the dev perspective, things might be quite different; although Phrakture doesn't explain the backstory...

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#9 2008-04-13 04:12:20

zodmaner
Member
Registered: 2007-07-11
Posts: 653

Re: a straight up, no patches distro?

I can't help but agreed with Misfit138 and bender02.

Another question is, how far will the policy going to be enforced? Will it only mean that extra feature patches won't get included or also some (or all?) of patches that provide bug fix. I would really love for the devs (and if possible, Phrakture wink ) to clarify this point.

In my humble opinion, I'm also fine with 'minimalist' patch policy, as long as we don't overdo it. Patching can be KISS as long as it is done to fix bug or resolve certain issue for end users.

Would love to see more discussion on this topic.

Last edited by zodmaner (2008-04-13 04:14:10)

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#10 2008-04-13 04:35:28

mintcoffee
Member
From: Waterloo, ON
Registered: 2007-10-05
Posts: 120
Website

Re: a straight up, no patches distro?

IMO, it depends what the patch is for. There are some old unmaintained packages that require patches for compilation (ie. gcc 4.3), kernel compatability, etc. These are necessary. Patches for new features on the other hand, should be kept to a minimal. These patches add features which are generally not tested as throughly as the program it patches. What ends up happening is that crashes and bugs occur, and Googling the problem doesn't return any hits since it was a Distro-specific problem relating to a certain patch submitted by random user-X that was found on random mailinglist-X.


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#11 2008-04-17 09:52:29

N1ckR
Member
From: West Yorkshire, UK
Registered: 2007-05-25
Posts: 39
Website

Re: a straight up, no patches distro?

I'm glad arch is moving back towards vanilla.

IMHO if anything is patched for anything beyond the essentials to get it to work, it should be created as an alternate stream to the original. This should go for Kernels especially.

Someone wanting a patch is a SPECIAL case and not the majority, yes support them on creating a patched version (instructions or doing the work for them), but do not forget most people do not need patched versions.

Also Arch is not patching to make a feature complete ready to run distro, this IMHO is against the philosophy in the Wiki that is so many times quoted, its upto the users to build their own system, Arch is not Ubuntu, Fedora OR SUSE.

As Arch is a rolling release, it also makes sense to stick to vanilla, as we can rely more on upstream testing of the software and concentrate more on distro level compatibility and packaging. Upstream Devs fix quickly if its an important feature generally, why patch and create more maintenance ?

Cheer, Nick.

Last edited by N1ckR (2008-04-17 09:53:50)

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