[osol-mktg] Re: [ug-discuss] Community Consolidation -- Marketing & UGs

[Shawn Walker]

On 04/04/07, Kaiwai Gardiner <kaiwai.gardiner at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Which brings a bigger question - does OpenSolaris need a home grown
> > > community distribution along the lines of Fedora or OpenSuSE given the
> > > current dearth of a distribution community? the current OpenSolaris
> Express
> >
> > If there's to be a homegrown distribution, it should be just that,
> > homegrown. A community needs to step up and do it, if Sun does it, it
> > really isn't "homegrown."
>
>
> Sun needs to set it up, then gradually hand it over to a 'maintainance'
> community who will keep the packages up to date, akin to the package
> maintainers you seen in the FreeBSD ports tree, for example.

Why does Sun need to do it? There is literally a mountain of
documentation over at docs.sun.com which is probably enough to tell
people how to do most of what they need to.

> > > CE respins are nice, but for those who aren't familar with OpenSolaris,
> the
> > > idea of downloading something that changes every 2 weeks can be a
> daunting
> > > experience - if there is a release, must I upgrade it? where does it
> leave
> >
> > That's what Solaris Developer Express is for. It's updated quarterly,
> > not every two weeks.
>
>
> True, but it doesn't address the issue of security updates, for example.

Yes, that is a sore spot that I think should be addressed, but I know
the community can address that issue if they want to. It would require
building patches which is a well documented process.

> > > me if I stay? which is why I bought up the idea of a community based
> > > respository where by releases can be made available not only in iso
> form,
> > > but 'apt-get' respository like form as to allow those who are unfamilar
> to
> > > remain 'up to date' without a constant cycle of re-install and
> disruption
> > > that goes with the territory.
> >
> > The whole update thing has been brought up before by others. Doing it
> > should be a community project though. I don't think anyone should
> > expect Sun to do it given the costs involved. There are of course many
> > issues to overcome, including redistribution and licensing rights to
> > some of the materials included in Solaris Express, as well as possible
> > technological hurdles.
> >
> > I don't think the average Solaris developer will be interested in a
> > version of Solaris that is akin to break-my-gentoo ;)
> >
> > I think the main point is that if this issue is to be addressed, the
> > community needs to address it. There is no excuse for them not to,
> > after all, Sun has already spent millions (very likely) on this
> > project (beginning from its inception); its only fair the community
> > gives back something.
>
>
>
> Sun doesn't need to maintain it for the long term, but to alteast setup a
> server, get that new boffin thats just been hired to get an apt-get srv5 pkg
> thing going. Maintain it and gradually hand over control to the community;
> have mentors in Sun to train up those in the community in how to create
> packages, as they do in the FreeBSD community with new ports maintainers.

I don't know why you are obsessing over an "apt-get" thing. It doesn't
have to be apt-get, it could be pkg-get or any other tool for that
matter. I think more general terms would be helpful rather than
implying you want some "debian" thing.

As far as "mentors" for creating packages. I sincerely doubt that is
necessary. Creating packages and patches on Solaris is an extremely
well documented process (unlike on other unnamed operating systems).
Heck, you can create packages pretty easily using
http://pkgbuild.sourceforge.net/ like the desktop community, or you
can even use Philip Brown's wonderful "gnutopkg" script here:
http://www.bolthole.com/solaris/gnutopkg.

I even have an improved version of it here:
http://icculus.org/~eviltypeguy/pkg/

along with several sample Solaris packages.

> Setup a process, a testing, unstable and stable when it comes to updating
> packages; if it is a security update, it is fast tracked from unstable to
> stable; if it is a 'update' - libxml has been updated by x.x.1 then the
> transition may need to be slower.
>
> Matthew

All of this process is already defined. If you read through the
documentation, you'll find almost all of it is already there. Release
taxonomies, Solaris engineering principles, package building, patch
creation, the whole works! Most of it is on docs.sun.com, the other
portion is on opensolaris.org.

Really, someone with the time and motivation could easily get a
project running fairly easily. Doing it for Solaris Express may not be
legally practical at the moment, but doing it for a "homegrown"
distribution would certainly be...

-- 
"Less is only more where more is no good." --Frank Lloyd Wright

Shawn Walker, Software and Systems Analyst
binarycrusader at gmail.com - http://binarycrusader.blogspot.com/