[development] Drupal Modules and Linux Distros

[James Walker]

On 10/25/06 12:24 PM, Dries Buytaert wrote:
> 
> On 25 Oct 2006, at 13:47, Konstantin Käfer wrote:
> 
>> To be honest, I can't really see the point in providing Drupal with a 
>> Linux distribution. Most users won't need it and those who do are 
>> usually skilled enough to do that themselves (at least they are using 
>> Gentoo and not Windows). Packaging contrib modules doesn't make that 
>> much sense to me as well because it's just unzipping a tarball into 
>> the modules directory (or wherever you install the module to). The 
>> actual installation has to happen inside of Drupal anyway.
> 
> We have a lot of people that install Drupal using Debian's apt-get.  
> Having to download and un-tar 10 tarballs is a pain.  Also, Gentoo 
> automatically recompiles Apache, PHP and/or MySQL if certain features 
> are missing, and might as well configure Apache.  In short, there are 
> many good reasons to support packagers like Gentoo, and I'd like to see 
> us actively support them (eg. don't re-create tarballs, upgrades from 
> the command line, etc.).
> 
> It is sad to see this discussion side-tracked.  The purpose of this 
> discussion is NOT to debate why packagers exist (that is not what 
> Seemant asked for), but to figure out how we can better cooperate.  The 
> world doesn't care about your opinion about packagers; whatever it is 
> you think about them, they are not going to go away.  So if you're not 
> going to help make Drupal better for packagers, don't add noise to the 
> discussion either.  It would be a waste of time and bits.  Thanks.
> 
> Seemant: as mentioned, the repackage issue will be fixed in the near 
> feature.  Anything else that we could do to make things easier on your 
> side?  If so, I'd love to learn more about it, so we can work on it.

FWIW, I'd love to see drupal become more package system friendly as 
well. Just because debian proper has a release cycle that doesn't work 
well with Drupal's doesn't mean that a drupal apt-repository isn't 
possible. And, as discussed here, gentoo could benefit a lot from drupal 
packages. There are a *lot* of benefits to having your drupal install 
maintained in the same manner as the rest of your system.

So, +1 - and a big thanks to dww (et al) for all the hard work he's done 
moving us in this direction.

-- 
James Walker :: http://walkah.net/ :: xmpp:walkah at walkah.net