The D ecosystem in Debian with free-as-in-freedom DMD

[via Digitalmars-d]

On Tuesday, 11 April 2017 at 12:36:41 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:

> Most programming languages are going this route, used 
> programming language tools and libraries are decreasingly 
> packaged by the OS.

Exactly the reason why we banned Go quite recently.
Just far too expensive, especially w/ crosscompile.

> Given things like Anaconda and PyPI, all the Fedora and Debian 
> Python packaging is increasingly wasted – except for those 
> packages used by the distribution itself.

Not at all. These folks just completely ignore the whole purpose
of binary distros. And I regularily see that at operating costs.
One of the major reasons why Windows operating is so expensive is
the lack of proper package management and distro infrastructures.

Few years ago, I've introduced apt-based package management for
Zimbra extensions (for some solution provider who also develops
lots of own extensions and customizations). Cut down deployment
costs to less than 10%.

> So I can see Fedora and Debian packaging Python and some bits
> and pieces, but otherwise it's not needed. Same is true for 
> Ruby, Go, Groovy, Java, etc.

With ruby, just given up completely - the community has shown
itself really hostile against distros, as well as any kind of
decent release engineering, which makes TOC very very expensive.

Python and Java are manageable (thanks to the hard work of distro
folks). No idea about Groovy.

Go is horrible - banned it from all projects.

> Debian and Fedora really do need to reassess their packaging 
> strategy with respect to software development.

Software developers should reassess their methodologies with
respect to distros and operating - these are the folks who make
the software actually usable for the arbitrary user, and they
get all the basting if something goes wrong again.

> Far too much effort is going into packaging when rolling release
> is far better handled by language specific systems.

Far too much effort is going into proprietary / language specific
homebrewn tools, by people who believe their own little subspace
bubble was the whole universe and have no idea what matters in
professional operating.

Much of my professional work is being HoD - the interface between
development, operating and PMO - or training development teams.
The numbers on my table tell a clear story.

> I suggest getting the compilers onto the distributions as a 
> marketing thing not as a real use thing.

Why should Distros like Debian do any marketing ?
Selling stuff isn't any of their objectives.

> For me the way Rust works by having it's own shell-based 
> installer
> is the right way of installing languages.

For me (as HoD, release manager, auditor, embedded engineer, 
software
architect, etc) such things are an complete showstopper - 
reproducable
build and deployment is a hard requirement - anything else is just
dangerous and expensive.


--mtx