Re:Why Use Debian Stable on the Desktop?
by majewsky on Wednesday January 03, 2018 @07:38AM
(#16060474)
I regularly build Arch packages. I once tried to build a Debian package, followed the tutorial, but gave up after nearly two hours. The amount of ceremony involved in Debian packaging is just absurd.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
The problem with Debian is that there is no One True Way to build packages. Instead everybody builds wrapper scripts calling other wrapper scripts and it builds up into a giant mess.
I'm guilty of this myself. The script I made is heavily inspired by Arch. The resulting script for Firefox is like this: https://github.com/qznc/simpledeb/blob/master/test/firefox.D...
Re:Why Use Debian Stable on the Desktop?
by samueloph on Wednesday January 03, 2018 @08:18AM
(#16060704)
Debian Maintainer here (currently in the process of becoming a Debian Developer).
I agree that the documentation lacks various improvements, but i would like to add that there's a difference between building a deb package and building a deb package for Debian.
Tl;DR: To build a deb package for Debian involves lots of extra steps and cautions than to build a simple deb package because Debian is pretty strict with what can enter the official repository. The documentation needs to be improved for both cases anyway.