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by mulmen
1174 days ago
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It’s called a distribution. Literally distributing the software. The distro deals with integrating all the packages into a single compatible system. This includes setting options to maintain system compatibility. Packaging is not required for testing individual applications. That happens at build time and the developer writes the tests. These are not distribution specific. The separation of concerns is very clear. If a distribution doesn’t package the code then the user is left to build the application themselves. It’s impractical that a developer would build and maintain their own packages for every flavor of every distribution. |
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Instead, I think distros have to provide the base packages like desktop environments and related software. All configured for compatibility and complying with the distro philosophy.
But third party desktop applications that are not directly related to the desktop environment are a different category. There is an endless amount of them with varying quality and resources. You cannot expect distro maintainers to spend time on all these random applications.
However, if a third party app is not included in a distro, it does not mean users have to build the software by themselves. That is the problem that Flatpak and Snap and others are trying to solve. They provide sets of distro-agnostic libraries that developers can target instead of having to target each distro separately.
This way a developer can only package the app once, distro maintainers don't have to do extra work, and users can install applications without having to manually configure and build them. Everyone is happy.