libgit 0.23.0 support
Dirk Hohndel
dirk at hohndel.org
Wed Aug 12 07:46:02 PDT 2015
On Wed, Aug 12, 2015 at 04:13:13PM +0200, Salvo Tomaselli wrote:
> When subsurface started using libgit2, it was clearly indicated by
> upstream that the library is unstable.
>
> Moreover, libgit2 was FTBFS (or crash on the testsuite) on every
> debian architecture except for x86_64. The library was clearly not
> ready for use.
Given that 99% of our users are on x86 I beg to differ.
> Libraries are crazy, but when clearly stated as unstable. Perhaps they
> shouldn't be used.
And I think this is what it boils down to. We have made the decision to
offer features to our users that depend on libraries that either are on
the bleeding edge (libgit2 - which allows us to do our cloud storage) or
that we use in unusual ways that require patches (libmarble) or where we
require changes that haven't made it upstream (libdivecomputer).
We could make all those things optional, turn our code into a mess of
ifdefs (more than it already is) and deliver a completely inconsistent
experience to our users with comments like "here are all these great
features, except on Debian, where they don't work" and then have similar
caveats all over the user manual.
Or we can say "sorry, the way applications are packaged in most
distributions is broken - the vision that an application and the libraries
it depends on are independent from each other and can be independently
maintained and upgraded is cute and optimistic and wonderful - it just
flat out doesn't work. At least for us."
And that's why we have decided to politely ask the distributions to no
longer package Subsurface unless they are open to allow us to require our
custom versions of these libraries. ArchLinux has an AUR that does just
that. I'm sure there are other distributions where this would work. But
for most main stream distributions it doesn't.
If I look through my server logs for Debian users I can see 21 users who
use my builds on their system. And another 14 which use Subsurface that
wasn't built by me - several of whom are developers here on this list.
So there are maybe a dozen people who use the Subsurface package shipping
with Debian. If I add in the Ubuntu users that aren't using my builds
(naively assuming that they aren't building from source - and we have a
ton of developers here who use Ubuntu) that adds another 50 or so. So
let's call this a very optimistic 60 users of the packages in Debian and
derivatives, total. Out of more than 800 users on Debian and Ubuntu and
other derivatives combined. And around 7000 across the different OSs.
My goal has to be to deliver the best possible experience to all those
users. I continue to believe that that's what we are doing.
Salvo, I really appreciate your commitment to open source software and to
Debian. And I appreciate your help with Subsurface. I have no interest in
annoying you or disappointing you or pissing you off. I am trying to
explain to you why we have made the decisions we have made and why we
believe that this is the right way to go.
/D
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