[Dev] [proposal] Having a pacman-based distro, stable.

[Nicolás Reynolds]

freaj <freaj at riseup.net> writes:

> Hi,
>
> We currently have Parabola, which is:
> - a Free distro, entirely free 
> - Based on pacman
> - Based on ArchLinux (repos ordering, design, softwares)
> - Unstable/breakable
> - Dependent

it's been a while since something broke for me in a way that's unusable :P

> So what it means is as follows: Parabola is Arch, but with exclusively
>free softwares. I know there is a lot of work behind it to make it work
>as it is right at the moment, but this is basically the point. When
>Archlinux breaks somewhere (ncmpcpp for example, we've all had
>something broken in Parabola, at least once?), it will break on
>Parabola. Of course, we all know for a fact here that Parabola is not a
>stable distro and it's not its aim/purpose. If we want a stable distro,
>we can move to trisquel? Hm. I have nothing against trisquel, but I
>have nothing in favor of trisquel either, it's based on ubuntu, not a
>rolling release, dpkg, etc.
> 
> I would like to propose a stable Parabola. I know it sounds easier said than done but, I'd like to.
> - A Free distro, entierly free
> - Based on pacman
> - Stable (1)
> - Customizable for us / Independent (2)
>
> 1)We will still be a rolling release distro but we will make sure packages don't break on updates.

i think there're some makepkg patches laying around that make
dependencies hard.  so if you build inkscape with imagemagick as
dependency, it'll require that specific version of imagemagick and won't
let you upgrade to another.

i recall having read about this on arch-dev-public and the idea was
discarded.  i also think lukeshu or mtjm were doing some work in this
line.

> 2) We can for example have many service files on daemon-packages (like
> httpd) for many init softwares, such as systemd, or gnudmd in the
> packages, to have a better dynamism on this part. Also, systemd is
> Linux-kernel only, maybe on the future we will plan to move on HURD!
> And I'm not idealistic.

is that stable? :P

> What we currently have to make it work:
> - Hope (that's for me)
> - A good team of people
>
> What we need to currently have make it work (as far as Emulatorman explained):
> - People, we need people
> - Ressources -> a build machine, or more, because everything will be packaged. As I understood there is already an autobuilder?
>
> Did I leave out  anything? The architecture is already running (for example with libre / pcr / etc)

another idea: make repos date dependent, like arch rollback machine, so
when i need a single package i don't have to upgrade the whole system
because dependencies change and other packages can break.

and, if you have an extremely outdated system you have an upgrade path
instead of dependency cycles just because a pacman system is unable to
bootstrap itself.

> What do you think about that? Is it a good idea? Bad?
>
> Thanks for reading!

i don't think i'll be able to contribute but i can save you some pain
because of mips64el :)

-- 
}(:=
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 584 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.parabola.nu/pipermail/dev/attachments/20150319/9fcdae57/attachment.sig>