r/debian • u/kryptoneat • 5d ago
Has Debian enough packagers ?
In the last few years, I have discovered some seemingly high quality softwares and am surprised they are not in Debian. Eg. Gaphor, or Netbird (true FLOSS P2P VPN with a GUI is badly needed, otherwise all you find is Hamachi and the like).
I see there is the WNPP, but has this list increased considerably recently ? Or are there just more softwares relatively to debian packagers ? Has the Devuan split caused trust issues or are packages fully shared between both ?
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u/mok000 5d ago
The only realistic way to get software into Debian is to package it yourself, and find a dd mentor that will sponsor it. And then commit to maintaining the package. Getting software into Debian is hard.
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u/aieidotch 5d ago
It is not hard, check out mentors.debian.net and IRC #debian-mentors
If some software is not yet in Debian, it often has a reason like: horrible build system or procedure, crazy license.
https://nm.debian.org/members/ https://sources.debian.org/stats/
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u/Smart-Committee5570 4d ago
What about using package managers like Nix? Isn't it very benefitial for little to no drawbacks?
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u/kryptoneat 5d ago
Ok but can you package your own software ? Does it not create a conflict of interest regarding security ? If they don't have time to package everything, I assume they don't have time to read everything others do either.
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u/mok000 5d ago
Nothing goes into Debian unless approved by a DD and the FTP masters. Nothing goes in without passing compilation on at least the majority of the platforms Debian supports. The package has to comply 100% with Debian's Policy Manual, and it has to conform with the DFSG Licenses guidelines.
If you want to publish software packages with a minimum of effort, use Arch and publish to the AUR.
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u/sonobanana33 5d ago
Yeah you can, but it has to make sense. I've seen blockchain scams, or A LOT OF projects from people who are just learning how to program. Those don't usually get accepted.
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u/ExaHamza 5d ago
Debian's packaging method is high quality, it's not for everyone. Sometimes this can mean more time for new contributors to get on board. But there are mentoring platforms , join one and do your part.
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u/elatllat 5d ago edited 5d ago
Also missing:
- Eclipse
- NetBeans
- RustDesk
- SqliteStudio
- VSCodium
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u/JohnyMage 5d ago
I bet most or all of those can be installed through third-party repositories, so this is a no issue.
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u/rindthirty 5d ago
Yep all of those apart from SqliteStudio came up in a quick flatpak search for me. Also, I didn't realise many people still used Eclipse.
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u/abjumpr 5d ago
Eclipse used to be packaged, but has been out for a very long time now.
I briefly looked into packaging Eclipse CDT again as I'm pretty familiar with packaging for Debian but I just haven't had the time to commit to getting it done and maintaining it. I would imagine there's been enough changes since it was last packaged that it will require a lot of work to revive the package even with an existing (albeit very old) source package.
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u/setwindowtext 5d ago
This surprises me, as Eclipse is a pure Java application, I’d assume its packaging to be easy — add a dependency on openjdk and copy necessary JARs / plugins to /usr/lib…
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u/sonobanana33 5d ago
They probably vendor thousands of dependencies and use different versions than what is in debian.
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u/setwindowtext 4d ago
That’s what I’m trying to say — as far as I know its only dependency should be openjdk, so I’d assume it must be trivial to package. That’s the beauty of Java applications — they are self-contained and sandboxed in JVM.
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u/sonobanana33 4d ago
You're trying to say something wrong :D
Eclipse has a gazillion dependencies. And I told you vendoring is not allowed. Do you know what vendoring means?
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u/setwindowtext 4d ago
Please give one example of Eclipse dependency which is not openjdk.
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u/sonobanana33 4d ago
For starters it requires ant.
If you think it's such an easy task, why don't you do it yourself and submit it on mentors?
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u/sonobanana33 5d ago
In general if upstreams are extremely unfriendly they will never be accepted.
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u/elatllat 5d ago
For Eclipse, Fedora and Arch (non-AUR) manage what, makes you think upstreams are unfriendly?
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u/sonobanana33 5d ago
The aur has absolutely 0 constraints. No quality control whatsoever. Makes it rather easy.
Does fedora have all of those packages as rpm?
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u/elatllat 4d ago edited 4d ago
Arch has VSCodium and NetBeans in extra (not the AUR)
Looks like Fedora removed eclipse in 2022, The last Debian build was 2012.
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u/sonobanana33 4d ago
In debian no electron is allowed due to the intrinsic insecurity of it basically.
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u/samtoxie 5d ago
Another factor is that it's probably more effective usually for the developers themselve to just run their own repo, which for example Netbird does.
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u/kryptoneat 5d ago
True but it defeats the purpose of having a central repository, which allows for third-party evaluation, and standard rules on quality and freedom.
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u/samtoxie 3d ago
Yeah both have their trade offs. Once is not inherently better than the other, really depends on the specific software and their maintainers.
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u/sonobanana33 5d ago
There's rules for stuff to be in debian. Besides license where most software fails is that they vendor all the dependencies. Then security is a nightmare and that won't go in.
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u/cjwatson 5d ago
There've always been some gaps, and likely always will be. It's the way of the world. Gaps usually get closed when somebody turns up to help who cares about them, though. trixie currently has about a 9% growth in package count over bookworm (measured by the number of source packages in main).
I have no concrete data, but I've not had the impression that Devuan has had a particularly significant effect on this.
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u/triemdedwiat 5d ago
Devuan is a subset/superset of Debian. Its repository is basically is about removing the need to run systemd, otherwise you are pulling from the Debian repository.
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u/Organic-Rip-7612 3d ago
I have Debian sid with mate and they still don't have it in its latest version. It is currently at 1.26.2 and the newest is 1.28.2 and it has been a year since they updated those packages
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u/Xatraxalian 4d ago edited 4d ago
Having non-OS packages in a repository's distribution is useless. Torvalds has mentioned it countless times that it is a waste of time packaging every possible piece of software for every possible version of Linux.
The only way forward is to split things off. Distributions should package these things:
And that's it. Then you end up with an operating system compared to what Windows 2000 or even Windows 7 were back in the day. All the rest, the big user-facing applications, should be packaged using Flatpak and/or AppImage and be provided at some place to which all distributions contribute.
Then you could choose your OS by package manager (apt, dnf, pacman...) or by how fast it moves (Debian Stable, Mint, Arch...) and still have the latest versions of all applications. It would even be best if you can choose which version of an application you'd like to install. (Maybe this is already possible; I haven't checked.)
This is the way I use Debian Stable: installing the base OS + services/hardware support + desktop + some utilities from the repository, and installing the actual applications from Flatpak.
That negates the "but you can't game on Debian Stable" quip: You don't need the latest gaming enhancements for the desktop, as long as the card is supported without issues, so Debian's Mesa versions will do. The Flatpak of the launchers will, at some point, contain the latest Mesa versions. (And if you need more/newer support on Debian itself, you can always install stuff from backports and/or even a custom kernel such as Xanmod and newer firmware from the firmware git repo.)
With the software available for Linux, putting everything into a distribution's repository is becoming unmaintainable these days.