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Debian would compile dependencies with versions lower than specified in the project, reintroducing bugs that users would blame upstream for, https://www.phoroni

Debian would compile dependencies with versions lower than specified in the project, reintroducing bugs that users would blame upstream for, https://www.phoronix.com/news/Debian-Orphans-Bcachefs-Tools https://www.phoronix.com/news/Debian-Orphans-Bcachefs-Tools

kstrauser 2y ago
Got it. I could see that being an issue.
linsomniac 2y ago
Why is Kent not providing his own deb packages that users can install to override the Debian provided ones to get updates?
- tmtvl 2y ago
  Because he isn't a Debian packager. That isn't his job.
- koverstreet 2y ago
  Perhaps down the road, after experimental is lifted. For now I've generally been telling distros to slow down. For anything this big staging the release is important, we don't need or want to be in every distro right away (the Fedora people were also _extremely_ gung ho in the past and I told them the same thing). Until every outstanding critical bug report is fixed (and there are still a few), I want power users testing it who know how to deal with things breaking, I don't want unsuspecting users getting bit.
  - nikp123 2y ago
    Already using it on a 3 drive gaming PC on NixOS and it's been great so far. The caching algo massively speeds up interactions and load times. Hope you continue the good work and best of luck.
  - linsomniac 2y ago
    Devil's advocate: You may find that it better achieves your goal to provide packages and say "For power users testing only". You might also be able to petition Debian to have it removed if it's leading to people foot-gunning. If I can help with deb/rpm packaging, let me know. I'm a power user here, excited about bcachefs, but haven't tried it because I don't have the time to give it a worthy test (remembering how much time I put into getting ZFS stable on Linux). Thanks for your hard work on it!
    - koverstreet 2y ago
      I'd love for someone to pick up the deb packaging. My only requirement is no unbundling :) If we can't get it into the official debian repo like that, we can just ship it as a ppa for now.
XorNot 2y ago
It seems honestly odd to me not to just vendor what you need as standalone packages if your dependencies are that specific and you're a filesystem i.e. you use the bcachefs-errno package, not errno.
- tredre3 2y ago
  Debian tends to put their principles above pragmatism (for better or worse), so would they even agree with such vendoring when it's entirely meant as a way to bypass their vision/requirements/process for how dependencies should be handled?
  - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
    That particular principle is bourne of pragmatism; Debian long ago learned the lesson that other distros are determined to relearn ( https://thenewstack.io/vendoring-why-you-still-have-overlooked-security-holes/b https://thenewstack.io/vendoring-why-you-still-have-overlook...) - vendoring is not good for security. In fact, I have come to view Debian's commitment to principles as almost always a practical matter, because those principles (almost?) always trade short-term pain for long-term quality and stability.
    - aragilar 2y ago
      It's also effectively what the big cloud vendors do with their monorepos. This makes sense when you have upstreams which are slow at upgrading (e.g. it looks like Debian is upgrading packages packages using older bootstrap to bootstrap v5 across the board, and such fixes get pushed upstream; there's also tooling to watch new releases, so Debian's tooling effectively acts like a system-wide dependabot).
  - XorNot 2y ago
    This isn't a Debian problem though, that's the point: if bcachefs-tools has such specific dependencies, then why doesn't it vendor it's own dependencies so it's clear they are packaged and used independently? A bunch of the packages in the release at hand were actually upgraded, not downgraded, for example.

kstrauser 2y ago

Got it. I could see that being an issue.

linsomniac 2y ago

Why is Kent not providing his own deb packages that users can install to override the Debian provided ones to get updates?

tmtvl 2y ago
Because he isn't a Debian packager. That isn't his job.
koverstreet 2y ago
Perhaps down the road, after experimental is lifted. For now I've generally been telling distros to slow down. For anything this big staging the release is important, we don't need or want to be in every distro right away (the Fedora people were also _extremely_ gung ho in the past and I told them the same thing). Until every outstanding critical bug report is fixed (and there are still a few), I want power users testing it who know how to deal with things breaking, I don't want unsuspecting users getting bit.
- nikp123 2y ago
  Already using it on a 3 drive gaming PC on NixOS and it's been great so far. The caching algo massively speeds up interactions and load times. Hope you continue the good work and best of luck.
- linsomniac 2y ago
  Devil's advocate: You may find that it better achieves your goal to provide packages and say "For power users testing only". You might also be able to petition Debian to have it removed if it's leading to people foot-gunning. If I can help with deb/rpm packaging, let me know. I'm a power user here, excited about bcachefs, but haven't tried it because I don't have the time to give it a worthy test (remembering how much time I put into getting ZFS stable on Linux). Thanks for your hard work on it!
  - koverstreet 2y ago
    I'd love for someone to pick up the deb packaging. My only requirement is no unbundling :) If we can't get it into the official debian repo like that, we can just ship it as a ppa for now.

XorNot 2y ago

It seems honestly odd to me not to just vendor what you need as standalone packages if your dependencies are that specific and you're a filesystem i.e. you use the bcachefs-errno package, not errno.

tredre3 2y ago
Debian tends to put their principles above pragmatism (for better or worse), so would they even agree with such vendoring when it's entirely meant as a way to bypass their vision/requirements/process for how dependencies should be handled?
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
  That particular principle is bourne of pragmatism; Debian long ago learned the lesson that other distros are determined to relearn ( https://thenewstack.io/vendoring-why-you-still-have-overlooked-security-holes/b https://thenewstack.io/vendoring-why-you-still-have-overlook...) - vendoring is not good for security. In fact, I have come to view Debian's commitment to principles as almost always a practical matter, because those principles (almost?) always trade short-term pain for long-term quality and stability.
  - aragilar 2y ago
    It's also effectively what the big cloud vendors do with their monorepos. This makes sense when you have upstreams which are slow at upgrading (e.g. it looks like Debian is upgrading packages packages using older bootstrap to bootstrap v5 across the board, and such fixes get pushed upstream; there's also tooling to watch new releases, so Debian's tooling effectively acts like a system-wide dependabot).
- XorNot 2y ago
  This isn't a Debian problem though, that's the point: if bcachefs-tools has such specific dependencies, then why doesn't it vendor it's own dependencies so it's clear they are packaged and used independently? A bunch of the packages in the release at hand were actually upgraded, not downgraded, for example.