Re: DEP-2: Debian Package Maintenance Hub
On Wed, 01 Feb 2012, Olivier Berger wrote:
> Do you intend to have such a system usable by / integrated with
> derivative distributions ?
I don't see any reason why the service could not be setup by derivatives
distributions if they wish, but honestly I don't expect them to install
it, much like I don't know of any other PTS/DDPO instance. Those tools are
pretty much specific to Debian.
What sort of integration with derivatives distribution are you interested
in? The PTS already features some information exported by Ubuntu. I expect
this to still be the case and I don't see why it couldn't be extended for
other derivatives in the future.
> I'm also thinking at the usefulness of it for mentors or PPA like
> package managing services.
Please explain what use cases do you see... I wasn't able to guess
how it could be useful.
> Maximizing interoperability with other software / package tools (outside
> the only pure "Debian" scope) should be an important goal IMHO, in
> particular in seeking standards to rely on in order to facilitate
> development of complementary tools (client side), and integration with
> other distributions, upstream/downstreams.
The first consumers of this new infrastructure are humans. While I have
mentionned "API for data export" as a design principle, I don't put the
same importance behind it that you do.
That said, if you're interested in working in this direction, you're
welcome.
> Among these, I'd suggest that REST [0] APIs would be very much
> interesting IMHO, in particular if the exchanges with it can be RDF [1]
> encoded as JSON, to provide compatibility with standards like OSLC [2],
> SPDX [3] or ADMS.F/OSS [4]. I'm not sure if your initial technology
> candidates (Django) can provide this upfront, though.
You seem to see benefits behind all those acronyms. I don't until I have
real use cases. Keep in mind that this infrastructure is for contributors
not for users.
> I'll describe quickly the benefits of these standards or specifications:
> - REST : building on Web in R+W modes as much as possible is the current
> trend, and provides out of the box content-negociated publication of
> data under different formats with the right underlying frameworks
Ok. But I expect most of the API to be read-only at least at the start.
For all the other standards you quoted, I don't see the use cases and
the benefits for Debian.
Cheers,
--
Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer
Pre-order a copy of the Debian Administrator's Handbook and help
liberate it: http://debian-handbook.info/liberation/
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