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#1 2005-05-30 10:08:43

xtypestereotype
Member
From: Melbourne, Australia
Registered: 2005-05-30
Posts: 4

Suggestion to move to fluxbox v0.9.x

I think arch should move to fluxbox v0.9.x as Slackware did (moved v0.1 to /pasture)
v0.9 is considered stable by the developer and v0.1x is so oudated smile

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#2 2005-05-30 17:13:41

phrakture
Arch Overlord
From: behind you
Registered: 2003-10-29
Posts: 7,879
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Re: Suggestion to move to fluxbox v0.9.x

fluxbox-devel is in the unstable repo...

on one old machine I have, I still use flux 0.1.14

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#3 2005-05-30 18:51:22

jerem
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From: France
Registered: 2005-01-15
Posts: 310

Re: Suggestion to move to fluxbox v0.9.x

I still do not understand why Arch devs are so stubborn to use that old crappy outdated fluxbox version.

That's the same with fvwm.

Hey hurry up !

On the About page :

The Current repository always contains the latest and greatest versions of packages


The old versions of fluxbox and fvwm are certainly not the latest and not the greatest. New versions are really stable and usable, they provide new popular features.

I am forced to use the testing and unstable repos whereas I dont want to.

And it is annoying to edit pacman.conf just to download two packages, especially when it comes with unwanted software like gcc and all the other packages that are in testing.

Is there a way to selectively upgrade to testing (apart from setting thousands of Ignorepkg) ?

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#4 2005-05-30 18:54:09

Dusty
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From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
Registered: 2004-01-18
Posts: 5,986
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Re: Suggestion to move to fluxbox v0.9.x

jerem wrote:

Is there a way to selectively upgrade to testing (apart from setting thousands of Ignorepkg) ?

You could put the testing repo after current. since fluxbox-devel has a different name, it would be installed from testing.

Alternatively, this is what I would do: Download the package file from the testing repo and install with pacman -U. that way you don't have to have it in pacman.conf.

Dusty

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#5 2005-05-31 00:01:52

iphitus
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From: Melbourne, Australia
Registered: 2004-10-09
Posts: 4,927

Re: Suggestion to move to fluxbox v0.9.x

imho, fluxbox-devel should be put in extra.

fluxbox 0.1.14 is old. If anyone ever asks for help with it, almost immediately the response is to update, nobody supports it any longer and nobody have for a long time. It isnt even maintained any more, 0.1.14 is a few years old now.

I've heard comments from the fluxbox developers in the irc channel, even they think that the devel version is more stable than the apparent stable version.

Most of the things holding up fluxbox's 0.9x series from going stable, are minor, like the documentation is incomplete, although mostly complete, and a handfull of obscure translations are yet to be updated.

iphitus

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#6 2005-05-31 00:18:12

Dusty
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From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
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Re: Suggestion to move to fluxbox v0.9.x

Sounds like somebody should post a bug report telling the devs what the community wants... if they disagree, they'll respond with good reasons in a bug report. They don't read the forum much.

Dusty

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#7 2005-05-31 06:38:59

dtw
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From: UK
Registered: 2004-08-03
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Re: Suggestion to move to fluxbox v0.9.x

i have tried to do this so many times!  The bug is there - I asked people to add a comment there if they were in favour - jack got done and I got shouted down by the devs

this is one issue the make me very very  :x

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#8 2005-05-31 07:14:23

iphitus
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From: Melbourne, Australia
Registered: 2004-10-09
Posts: 4,927

Re: Suggestion to move to fluxbox v0.9.x

let us know that the bug is there and we can comment too then.

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#9 2005-05-31 07:28:58

dtw
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From: UK
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Posts: 4,439
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Re: Suggestion to move to fluxbox v0.9.x

iph - here is the original thread:
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php? … a&start=15

in which you argued against my proposal  lol

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#10 2005-05-31 07:43:08

iphitus
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From: Melbourne, Australia
Registered: 2004-10-09
Posts: 4,927

Re: Suggestion to move to fluxbox v0.9.x

dibblethewrecker wrote:

iph - here is the original thread:
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php? … a&start=15

in which you argued against my proposal  lol

forgive me for being such an asshat.

god knows what i was smoking that day.


imho: yes  fluxbox-'devel' should be in extra.

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#11 2005-05-31 08:32:24

dtw
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From: UK
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Re: Suggestion to move to fluxbox v0.9.x

no wokkas

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#12 2005-05-31 10:27:32

Cotton
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From: Cornwall, UK
Registered: 2004-09-17
Posts: 568

Re: Suggestion to move to fluxbox v0.9.x

I still do not understand why Arch devs are so stubborn to use that old crappy outdated fluxbox version.

Presumably because they don't want development packages in extra.

Is there a way to selectively upgrade to testing (apart from setting thousands of Ignorepkg) ?

Whenever a new version becomes available (on the arch home page), you can temporarily enable the unstable repository in /etc/pacman.conf then do

pacman -Sy fluxbox-devel

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#13 2005-05-31 11:04:10

iphitus
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From: Melbourne, Australia
Registered: 2004-10-09
Posts: 4,927

Re: Suggestion to move to fluxbox v0.9.x

Cotton: Read. Even the Fluxbox Developers consider 0.9x to be more stable than 0.1x. Nobody offers support f0r 0.1x either, the first thing you will be told is to: update to 0.9x.

Thirdly, 0.1x is more than 2 years old, and has not been updated or touched by the fluxbox developers since then in any way shape or form.

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#14 2005-05-31 12:21:17

xtypestereotype
Member
From: Melbourne, Australia
Registered: 2005-05-30
Posts: 4

Re: Suggestion to move to fluxbox v0.9.x

A copy and paste from the fluxbox main page:

DOWNLOAD
LATEST DEVEL (v0.9.13)
(maintained, also stable)
v0.9.13 Source tarball
v0.9.13 Source bz2

LATEST STABLE (v0.1.14)
(old, unmaintained)
v0.1.14 Source tarball
v0.1.14 Source bz2

Notice that on the devel they say "also stable". wink

I think they are using the same approach as the linux kernel, with the development releases also being the stable ones (no 2.7 branch)...

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#15 2005-05-31 14:22:22

Cotton
Member
From: Cornwall, UK
Registered: 2004-09-17
Posts: 568

Re: Suggestion to move to fluxbox v0.9.x

Cotton: Read. Even the Fluxbox Developers consider 0.9x to be more stable than 0.1x. Nobody offers support f0r 0.1x either, the first thing you will be told is to: update to 0.9x.

Yeah I know.  But maybe its the principle of including packages with -devel in the name.  Obviously it wouldn't take much to rename it to -current or something, but then its out of sync with fluxbox's own naming convention.

Anyway its not a big deal.  Anyone who knows enough to want to use the 0.9 series is more than capable of finding it themselves or building it from abs.

On a scale of 1 to 10 of things to sort out, this must rate as 1.

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#16 2005-05-31 14:30:51

phrakture
Arch Overlord
From: behind you
Registered: 2003-10-29
Posts: 7,879
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Re: Suggestion to move to fluxbox v0.9.x

Cotton wrote:

I still do not understand why Arch devs are so stubborn to use that old crappy outdated fluxbox version.

Presumably because they don't want development packages in extra.

I agree with Cotton on this... the fluxbox devs, who know fluxbox better than anyone else, have the testicular fortitude to call the new fluxbox the "development version"... stable or not doesn't matter.  Obviously the fluxbox devs feel it's important to keep these two version available...

Hey, vim 7.0075 is stable...should we move to that? (it's in alpha-alpha, but that's just some silly name like "devel", right guys?)

Cotton wrote:

Is there a way to selectively upgrade to testing (apart from setting thousands of Ignorepkg) ?

Whenever a new version becomes available (on the arch home page), you can temporarily enable the unstable repository in /etc/pacman.conf then do

pacman -Sy fluxbox-devel

you can also specifiy the repo in the pacman statement:

pacman -S testing/gcc
pacman -S klapmuetz/lighttpd

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#17 2005-05-31 15:21:50

filoktetes
Member
From: Skien, Norway
Registered: 2003-12-29
Posts: 287

Re: Suggestion to move to fluxbox v0.9.x

Not to have development versions of packages in the main repos is a good principle. But exceptions to principles should be made when it's an obvious good thing.
It is irritating to be forced to use the testing repo to have up to date software. One of the reasons I use arch is that I usually don't have to do such things. If I wanted to wait two years for the new and better version to be absolutly thoroghly tested, I'd use debian.

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#18 2005-05-31 15:46:01

phrakture
Arch Overlord
From: behind you
Registered: 2003-10-29
Posts: 7,879
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Re: Suggestion to move to fluxbox v0.9.x

reb wrote:

Not to have development versions of packages in the main repos is a good principle. But exceptions to principles should be made when it's an obvious good thing.
It is irritating to be forced to use the testing repo to have up to date software. One of the reasons I use arch is that I usually don't have to do such things. If I wanted to wait two years for the new and better version to be absolutly thoroghly tested, I'd use debian.

sigh... the maintainers can't just release untested software... I personally don't have any issues with the release cycle right now

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#19 2005-05-31 16:36:11

jerem
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From: France
Registered: 2005-01-15
Posts: 310

Re: Suggestion to move to fluxbox v0.9.x

It's clear we don't want all devel packages to be put in /extra.

Just the softwares which are "called" devel but are not really devel.

It's like Debian's testing, which is more stable than every other distro.

Even their unstable is stable !

Fluxbox (and to my opinion fvwm too) need to get in /extra because they are stable and provide popular features.

Who the hell would prefer using the old fvwm instead of the 2.5 tree ? Most beautiful themes are now uncompatible with 2.4 version...

Who the hell would prefer using a buggy fluxbox without the hundreds of bugfixes, feature enhancements, etc.... ???

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#20 2005-05-31 19:54:41

Dusty
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From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
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Posts: 5,986
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Re: Suggestion to move to fluxbox v0.9.x

special cases suck though... its such a hard decision...

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#21 2005-06-01 02:09:19

dtw
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From: UK
Registered: 2004-08-03
Posts: 4,439
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Re: Suggestion to move to fluxbox v0.9.x

Consider this

A development version is pre 1.0?  How do we define development versions?

Openbox and Wesnoth are both in extra but still under development - ivman is in there but is barely half started.

If fluxbox-dev and fvwm-dev were release under different names, as forks of the original project you can bet your ass they would be in extra now

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#22 2005-06-01 05:58:53

phrakture
Arch Overlord
From: behind you
Registered: 2003-10-29
Posts: 7,879
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Re: Suggestion to move to fluxbox v0.9.x

dibblethewrecker wrote:

Consider this

A development version is pre 1.0?  How do we define development versions?

Openbox and Wesnoth are both in extra but still under development - ivman is in there but is barely half started.

If fluxbox-dev and fvwm-dev were release under different names, as forks of the original project you can bet your ass they would be in extra now

I define "development" version by what the developers of the app call it - in this case, the fluxbox devs specify that 0.9.X is the development version.

Every app is always under development, that's the nature of the industry.  It's kinda like what I said about vim - vim 7.0075 is 100% rock solid, but the developers are calling it 7.0aa (for alpha-alpha)... do you want that to replace your vim 6.3? now, if the vim devs release 7.0 as a stable release, *then and only then* will it replace 6.3

So I say this - if you want fluxbox 0.9.X as the stable version, contact the fluxbox devs and say "hey, listen - you have 0.1.14 as the stable version, which is confusing to distro packagers... can you please label a 0.9 release as the new stable version?"

On another note, seeing as the fluxbox devs distribute both versions on their download page, if we make 0.9.X the "fluxbox" package's version, what do we then call 0.1.14? "fluxbox-old"?

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#23 2005-06-01 06:13:26

dtw
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From: UK
Registered: 2004-08-03
Posts: 4,439
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Re: Suggestion to move to fluxbox v0.9.x

i'll drop henrik a line

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#24 2005-06-01 11:12:19

dtw
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From: UK
Registered: 2004-08-03
Posts: 4,439
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Re: Suggestion to move to fluxbox v0.9.x

from the fluxbox-devel mailing list:

ak|ra wrote:

it sounds strange to me that the decision, to make a package/app part
of "stable" or not depends on how we label the tarball? a tarball
which is labeled "kungfoo-superstable" and segfaults as fast as the
lightning would make it into the repository?

quote from slackware's changelog:

+--------------------------+
Tue Sep  7 18:38:29 PDT 2004
xap/fluxbox-0.9.10-i486-1.tgz:  Upgraded to fluxbox-0.9.10.
  This is the development version, but they say it's stable, so
  I'll defer to upstream judgement.
pasture/fluxbox-0.1.14-i386-1.tgz:  Moved to /pasture.
  This is still officially the current stable version, but the
  developers say it's old and unmaintained, so off to /pasture it goes.


i personally thing distros shouldnt watch for how the tarballs are
labeled but for what upstream say and think about the stability and
what the users say and think about the stability + usability. names
and versionnumbers are not a good indicator for stability.

yours, mathias

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#25 2005-06-01 14:17:32

xtypestereotype
Member
From: Melbourne, Australia
Registered: 2005-05-30
Posts: 4

Re: Suggestion to move to fluxbox v0.9.x

Doesn't the fact that it is UNSUPPORTED mean anything?

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