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Comment by cglong | Hacker News Reader

As someone who's thinking about moving to Linux and has made many non-trivial contributions to Homebrew, the contribution process for Debian packages scares me. The official documentation seems to be more of a reference guide than a tutorial, and community blog posts always seem to start with "That other tool is outdated; here's the new way to do it," making it impossible to know which method is the right one.

IMO, what really needs some lovin' is the official onboarding process for new contributors.

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Here's something to keep in mind that isn't super clear to newcomers, Linux != Debian. Linus Torvalds doesn't use Debian and nothing Debian does really impacts him or the core of Linux. Debian is just a highly opinionated take on Linux. You can totally dive in and be super productive with Linux without ever having to know about, use or, or care that Debian exists. (oh and Homebrew works great on Linux, give it a shot as it's a really easy way to move over from OSX).

Regarding the Debian package process, etc.--I'll be blunt and say that all of the pain you see is by design. It's not designed to be a super inclusive or friendly community for contributions. There are explicit gatekeeping checks in place to ensure everyone follows "the Debian way" (nevermind that there is no clear definition of "the Debian way" that anyone agrees on and it's only used to enforce power hierarchies in the project). It comes from an even older gatekeeping around "the Unix way". IMHO ignore all that rubbish.

It sounds like the focus on "the Debian way" is the cause for the symptom cataloged by the original article. The Homebrew maintainers are also notoriously picky (and for good reason), but I think it's the open nature of GitHub that has helped it grow so well. I wonder if opening the Debian gates a bit (at least superficially) would help encourage a healthier package ecosystem.

Like most things in software, it's ultimately just people and collaboration problems. I should be careful not to paint Debian in too bad of a light because ultimately it's what the people involved make it--good or bad. It's just that historically Debian enthusiasts have gravitated towards a lot of bad, old gatekeeping mindsets that have really made it difficult for the broader Linux community to grow. For example I think back to all the drama with the early days of Ubuntu and how many in the Debian community were vehemently against the idea that someone make a distro that's easier for people to use.

> For example I think back to all the drama with the early days of Ubuntu and how many in the Debian community were vehemently against the idea that someone make a distro that's easier for people to use.

That is disingenuous.

As much as I am annoyed by Debian gatekeeping, I am also gratefull that there still exist one Linux distribution that's serious about their users rights, aka software freedom, and that is able to properly discern, for instance, that Ubuntu was not going to be easier for newbies to install on their computers than it was going to be easier for Ubuntu to force, say, amazon crapware on newbies computers.

I hate Debian gatekeeping yet one have to admit that's the last line of defense against appstores everywhere and the last living example of what user empowerment can be.

> the last line of defense against appstores everywhere

Package management on Debian has started to look much like an app store (in a good way) with Gnome Software[0], just without all the non-free stuff.

[0]: https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Software

"By Design" is a bit much. Debian loves people putting things in .deb files. There is a purposeful barrier to putting things in the main archive, but nobody wants there to be any barriers around tooling.

And I'll offer a defence of that barrier - Debian isn't about making an operating system. It is very explicitly making a free operating system. Listening to one Q&A session after a Stallman speech was more than enough to show me that there are a lot of capable developers out there who just don't get the idea of free. While those developers are a mighty force for good they need to be kept away from the Debian main archive. It isn't a place for them. They can go start their own project (eg: Ubuntu, Mint).

Debian is one of the distros that really takes package security seriously, which is a big plus for me.

> It comes from an even older gatekeeping around "the Unix way".

That's not gatekeeping, that's a very specifically-defined approach to operating systems.

I understand if you're taking issue with the term as a pejorative, but how is purposefully placing barriers for those that don't conform to the "specifically-defined approach" not definitionally gatekeeping?

I think of "gatekeeping" as blocking access, especially for something that doesn't have a defined membership, like a fandom. e.g. "you're not a real star wars fan if..."

whereas anyone is welcome to contribute to debian, they just have to follow the rules. there's kind of no meaning to the term "gatekeeping" if any organization that has rules to follow counts.

gatekeeping is used as pejorative in those cases, where no gate ought to be. for example in at least one email Linus claims that forbidding C++ in the kernel was also to exclude C++ developers, whether he was right or wrong that is another case of gatekeeping

If you actually believe that, then all software specs are "gatekeeping".

But you do realize that I'm objecting to its use as a pejorative here.

I don't think it is "by design". Many Debian contributors are frustrated as well by the packaging processes and tools, but it turns out that it is not that easy to coordinate the work of thousands of people, most of whose contribute voluntarily in their free time. Debian was founded in the early 90's, developed by thousands and used by millions. It has tens of thousands of packages. You don't just migrate them to the newest packaging technology every day. Once upon a time the next big thing was Subversion. Now it is Git. What will it be next decade? It is difficult to keep up on volunteer work.

I don't mean to say that you have to accept it as it is. If you don't like it, just go somewhere else. If you are motivated to help fixing stuff, that's wonderful. Just don't pretend we like to make stuff difficult for the sake of it.

Disclaimer: volunteer Debian Developer, always on short time to contribute.

Debian packaging being complex, there are many documentations around it. Packaging practices also change, but it's difficult to know which documentation is up-to-date or not. However, the very official documentation from the project is kept up-to-date: https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/maint-guide/ and https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/developers-reference/. But, yes, they are long and only cover the basics. There is also https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/packaging-tutorial/packag... which is kept up-to-date and is more in the tutorial style.

Every few years, there are various attempts at simplifying packaging, usually in the form of a more universal helper to build a package skeleton, but it doesn't really reduce the complexity and until now, none of these helpers replaced debmake.

Please note that maint-guide is considered deprecated by its author, who has switched to debmake-doc.

I found this article from 2 years a great read: https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2019-03-10-debian-windin...

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