About arch's own following of the arch way...

ngoonee · 2011-05-29 12:03:49

Awebb wrote:

1. I had my morning exercise.

Doesn't exercise normally involve the, you know, physical muscles? =p

Besides, aren't there packages which apply external patches (which won't show up in abs because they're not stored in the .pkg.tar.gz?

Awebb · 2011-05-29 12:40:38

ngoonee wrote:

Doesn't exercise normally involve the, you know, physical muscles? =p

Oh... crap... I'm... erm... my ID card says I'm Christian, so I'm not supposed to do such things on a Sunday :-D

ngoonee wrote:

Besides, aren't there packages which apply external patches (which won't show up in abs because they're not stored in the .pkg.tar.gz?

You mean my exercise should also include scanning the PKGBUILD files? :-D

karol · 2011-05-29 12:46:16

Awebb wrote:

ngoonee wrote:
Doesn't exercise normally involve the, you know, physical muscles? =p
Oh... crap... I'm... erm... my ID card says I'm Christian, so I'm not supposed to do such things on a Sunday :-D

But swear you can, eh?

Awebb wrote:

You mean my exercise should also include scanning the PKGBUILD files? :-D

That is a suitable penance, my son. A full-fledged PKGBUILD parser would be godsend.

Awebb · 2011-05-29 13:06:04

karol wrote:

But swear you can, eh?

Penance? Thank god I'm an atheist...

jnguyen · 2011-05-29 13:30:09

Awebb wrote:

That means about 6.67% of all packages have patches at all. I think this is a good ratio.

It might be interesting to see what ratio of those patches fix bugs or build problems, rather than add features. I would guess that the majority of those patches are indeed required to fix bugs and so would be considered appropriate with the Arch Way.

akephalos · 2011-05-29 13:38:50

Ramses de Norre wrote:

I don't think anyone benefits from taking a fundamentalist attitude towards any philosophy. Everyone sees in the world what such a state of mind does to mankind.
In particular for arch, one should in every case outweigh the pros and cons, using the arch philosophy as a guideline and gauge, and then take a decision. And I really can't imagine anyone being truly offended by the arch logo on boot-up or by ext4 support in grub, though if there are people who are, they should probably start their own distro and formulate their own philosophy to which to adhere strictly and rigorously.
I'm glad the arch devs are more loose with theirs

IMHO it's not about fundamentalism but principles. My impression is that principles are what gave Arch its essence, and attracted a certain kind of (otherwise discontent) user. That can be said about Slackware and other software projects. The "fix it even if it ain't broken" attitude is not necessarily a bad thing, they make successful distros like Ubuntu, SUSE, etc, they're just not my piece of cake and this is why I chose Arch.

I'm not against features, I'm myself customizing my installation (including Arch themes which I love and patched software), just I think any distro-specific tweaks should remain optional, based on the promise of a KISS system. Picking on specific packages we miss the big picture (and the trend) - the topic of this thread. The OP and the supporting posts are just stating a fact, not making a request, your invitation to "start their own distro" sounds inappropriate, especially since what's "necessary" and what's "additional feature" are to a large extent subjective judgments, not strictly determined by the philosophy per se.

mhertz · 2011-05-29 14:25:26

@akephalos

Thank you for your nice posting!

That was exactly my point, but just formulated much better and to the point!

CU, Martin

Awebb · 2011-05-29 15:09:24

jnguyen wrote:

Awebb wrote:
That means about 6.67% of all packages have patches at all. I think this is a good ratio.
It might be interesting to see what ratio of those patches fix bugs or build problems, rather than add features.

I thought about that too, but most fixes don't have "fix" in the file name (although some do, 173 to be precise) and the patch itself usually has no comments that could be filtered without a very sophisticated script.

ANOKNUSA · 2011-05-29 16:17:26

1) Patching GRUB to sutport ext4 (the latest stable, performant filesystem) is a patch to provide what has for some time been considered standard functionality. Practically everyone uses ext4, and GRUB legacy is no longer being actively developed while GRUB2 isn't yet considered "finished."

2) Replacing one image file with another is not patching, as it doesn't use any overriding code to alter the fundamental functions of the software. No one should even have to point that out.

thayer · 2011-05-29 17:05:53

Would the following corrections put an end to these fundamentalist discussions?

From Arch's official about page and wiki:

Arch strives to keep its packages as close to the original upstream software as possible. Patches are typically applied only when necessary to ensure an application compiles and runs correctly with the other packages installed on an up-to-date Arch system.

Arch provides mostly non-patched, vanilla software; packages are usually offered from pure upstream sources, how the author originally intended it be distributed. Patching only occurs in ~~extremely~~ rare cases, usually to prevent severe breakage in the instance of version mismatches that may occur within a rolling release model

Failing that, perhaps we could add a footnote:

These are, of course, merely guidelines and we, the volunteer developers, can and do use our own discretion when making exceptions.

karol · 2011-05-29 17:17:26

thayer wrote:

Would the following corrections put an end to these fundamentalist discussions?
From Arch's official about page and wiki:
Arch strives to keep its packages as close to the original upstream software as possible. Patches are typically applied only when necessary to ensure an application compiles and runs correctly with the other packages installed on an up-to-date Arch system.
Arch provides mostly non-patched, vanilla software; packages are usually offered from pure upstream sources, how the author originally intended it be distributed. Patching only occurs in ~~extremely~~ rare cases, usually to prevent severe breakage in the instance of version mismatches that may occur within a rolling release model
Failing that, perhaps we could add a footnote:
These are, of course, merely guidelines and we, the volunteer developers, can and do use our own discretion when making exceptions.

I prefer the footnote. It feels like "a loaded gun beats four aces" :-)

mhertz · 2011-05-29 17:59:28

ANOKNUSA wrote:

1) Patching GRUB to sutport ext4 (the latest stable, performant filesystem) is a patch to provide what has for some time been considered standard functionality. Practically everyone uses ext4, and GRUB legacy is no longer being actively developed while GRUB2 isn't yet considered "finished."

Agreed! Still though, the ext4 patch adds extra functionality to the grub package, in that it dosen't support it by itself and hence is extra, no matter how much standard feature(-but not to grub-legacy!)

2) Replacing one image file with another is not patching, as it doesn't use any overriding code to alter the fundamental functions of the software. No one should even have to point that out.

Agreed, and that's why I wrote: "xorg patched to show a different desktop background and the kernel's tux logo exchanged with an arch logo!"
The tux-logo-change is added branding which isn't "as close to upstream as possible" or "unmodified"...

thayer wrote:

Would the following corrections put an end to these fundamentalist discussions?[...]

Yes, fully so! Allthough I personally do not hope that this is done!

Arch is a distro with a rather strict policy, which is what I and many others where attracted too!

Yes, of course it's the devs that decide, however I think that it's the role of the arch overlord which should make sure that ppl that are devs for arch, do share the common arch-design-philosophy, which I do not think is the case here!

Yes, I can make bug-reports on the bugtracker, but I just first wanted to test the waters here, so as to see if i'm gonna completelly waste my time with that or what...

I

akephalos · 2011-05-29 18:28:31

mhertz wrote:

Yes, of course it's the devs that decide

This is the premise I used regarding the decisions of what's necessary, I forgot to mention that . I just hope Arch will stay as likeable as now... or previously.

Last edited by akephalos (2011-05-29 18:29:15)

litemotiv · 2011-05-29 19:15:54

As mentioned before in this thread: please file bugreports for packages which you feel have unnecessary patches applied, or post on the mailinglist. The forums are not the designated channel to discuss development decisions.

Closing.

Arch Linux

#26 2011-05-29 12:03:49

Re: About arch's own following of the arch way...

#27 2011-05-29 12:40:38

Re: About arch's own following of the arch way...

#28 2011-05-29 12:46:16

Re: About arch's own following of the arch way...

#29 2011-05-29 13:06:04

Re: About arch's own following of the arch way...

#30 2011-05-29 13:30:09

Re: About arch's own following of the arch way...

#31 2011-05-29 13:38:50

Re: About arch's own following of the arch way...

#32 2011-05-29 14:25:26

Re: About arch's own following of the arch way...

#33 2011-05-29 15:09:24

Re: About arch's own following of the arch way...

#34 2011-05-29 16:17:26

Re: About arch's own following of the arch way...

#35 2011-05-29 17:05:53

Re: About arch's own following of the arch way...

#36 2011-05-29 17:17:26

Re: About arch's own following of the arch way...

#37 2011-05-29 17:59:28

Re: About arch's own following of the arch way...

#38 2011-05-29 18:28:31

Re: About arch's own following of the arch way...

#39 2011-05-29 19:15:54

Re: About arch's own following of the arch way...

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