Re: Comments please

[George Bonser <grep@oriole.sbay.org>]

On Tue, 27 Jan 1998, Randy Heineke wrote:

> It seems like most of the document is talking about Debian not SEUL.  Is
> this stuff in the right place?  I think having strong links with debian
> is good, but I'm not sure I see enough room for our own customization.

That document only covers our development up to the first release. Since
our baseline is going to be Debian, it does figure quite heavilly in the
document.  Also, consider this: Debian has a couple of hundred developers
working on nearly 2,000 packages. Imagine a security bug is discovered in
gzip. When the new debian gzip package is released, we simply incorporate
it.  It saves us a LOT of work. Chances are pretty good that we will not
be working on an improved gzip, at least not on the first release.  On the
other hand, Debian might LIKE some of our changes and want to incorporate
them. Finally, some of Debian's users might like our packages even if
the Debian leadership does not.  If one of our developers was maintaining
the package for both distributions, it would be good to find a way of
allowing a Debian user to choose a SEUL look and feel if available.

If a maintainer here is working on ... say Window Maker and Window Maker
goes up for adoption in Debian, it would be a relatively simple matter for
our developer to pick it up.  I am simply trying to make it easy for
Debian's developers to contribute to our project and for us to handle
their packages if one wants to.


> 
> I see no room for archiving old versions of SEUL.  This notion comes up
> because I'm having trouble finding rpm that don't require glibc.  I've
> had too much trouble with glibc.

That is a great advantage of Debian 2.0 ... it has BOTH glibc and libc5.
BOTH kinds of applications run with it. As for archiving, that was
discussed at length on IRC Sunday.  That is planned but the scope of this
document was up to the first release.  There will be a SEUL Policy
document that will describe in better detail the maintainance of the
distribution.  The only point that I extended past the initial release was
the concept that migration solutions would be provided for future
upgrades.  I wanted to plant that seed in the back of everyone's mind from
the beginning.  When you make a major change, how are you going to bridge
the user base.  That is what Debian is spending a lot of effort doing now.
And that is what Red Hat spent nearly NO effort doing. This is one of the
advantages of working closely with Debian.  They have a reputation of
about the most easilly upgradeable distribution around. Not the easiest to
install ... but the best when it comes to upgrading once you have it
installed.


 
> Maybe we could give our documents a "look" that reinforces the "feel" of
> a finished product when we add them to the SEUL web site.

Absolutely ... I wanted to very clearly convey a look of an UNfinished
document in what I wrote ;)

Thanks for your input.

George Bonser 
If NT is the answer, you didn't understand the question. (NOTE: Stolen sig)
http://www.debian.org
Debian/GNU Linux ... the maintainable operating system.

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