epoll, LSB (was: Re: Problem roundup)

[Mike Hearn]

On Fri, 19 Nov 2004 22:17:40 -0800, Dan Kegel wrote:
> I wonder, though: the fact that somebody downloaded the wrong
> package means there are probably too many different versions
> at sourceforge to download.  I count 24 packages!  (OK, a few of
> them are srpms.)  

That's typical for open source Linux projects. It's a stupid mess. There
*could* only be one package, if Linux was an actual platform and not
merely a series of random binary snapshots pretending to be something
stable.

> Shoot, can't we package Wine as an LSB package?

No, that's really not possible/sensible.

> I suspect Wine depends on nothing that isn't in the LSB.

I suspect it depends on a lot, for instance FreeType, OpenSSL, CUPS,
fontconfig, libasound/arts/jack, SANE, libjpeg etc etc.

> That'd make life a lot easier for the users... at least for
> those whose distros come with LSB support installed by default.

The LSB is a waste of time for desktop apps (which Wine is) and will
continue to be so until either major management/scope changes are made to
the project or some seriously large amounts of manpower are dumped into
it. Even then the LSB would be a pale shadow of what we need to be
competitive with Windows, as this is really a community-wide mentality
problem not a structural/logistical problem. You could compare it to the
usability issues the open source community was blissfully ignorant of up
until a few years ago. A GNOME/HIG style educational push will be
required to make distro-neutral binary packaging truly viable/reliable.

It's more likely that a different platform/base project will come along
and usurp it (at least in the desktop space) to be quite honest.

Until then I'll continue recommending we hack around epoll style problems
and work towards having distro-neutral binary packages distributed
alongside the RPMs on SourceForge. Autopackage when it's stable is one
possibility, Loki Setup is used in CrossOver and that works quite well too
although it's rather old now (and some users can't always figure out how
to run it). There are probably other possibilities I'm not aware of.

thanks -mike