| The effort to package is precisely what the complaint is about; you have to tell (in package manifest) where your files land and which are app files (to be removed freely) and which are config (user might want to leave it, won't be automatically overwritten on update) > devs don't like packaging for every distro under the sun source .deb will generally works fine under Ubuntu, Debian and most flavours just fine unless you have some funky dependencies (and if you do, installer will also be complex) RHEL/Centos RPM will cover near-whole rest of the market. MacOS/FreeBSD will be different enough anyway that you will need to write a bunch more in install script Building simple package that just delivers binary is not even that complicated. Getting them to pass distro muster is often harder but you don't need to do that. > Package managers are great... for the user. For everyone else, a polyglot system, with arcane technical policies, and even more arcane human policies is... not ideal. Most of those "arcane" policies are there so random incompetent dev won't fuck up other stuff in the system. Which is also why users want packages in the first place. And you don't need to abide to any policy to make simple package that just puts your files on the system. Building dumb debian package is just few metadata files (post/preinst scripts + a file describing your package) in a directory and a single command. You only need to worry about policies if you want to submit package to distro, and there are in place for a reason. No shit they are better for users, that's their entire fucking point! |
I'm not even sure we disagree about anything, and you're yelling? FWIW I package and distribute my software but for a long time I didn't.
My position is very simple -- it's always easier if someone else does the work for you. If someone chooses not to distribute with a package, that's fine. If it bothers you, the choice is to build a package spec and pipeline for that project, not to moan about it. But packages are not an entitlement of a non-paying user. That user is perfectly entitled not to use your software, because complaining about the packages you may or may not have available is stupid, and not the devs problem.