Notices

There are several reasons.

At least Tear is currently impossible to get into extras/extras-devel. Unless Vala is currently supported with custom vapis and some changes to system includes.

Another thing is even though I'm not sure Tear is stable enough for mass usage, people are willing to try it and are afraid of extras-devel, and it seems the already existing qole repo is good for easy installation. The only lib in it that exists in extras-devel is libidn11 and its taken from there.

Extras is out of the question yet.

And none of these things can be worked around or fixed? Have we tried to fix them, or did we just go straight to opening yet another user-hostile 3rd party repository?

??????????

As much as I like to see stuff in extras, it's just not always possible. I for example did everything I could, but depending on other peoples stuff that isn't in extras totally killed it for me. Getting fscked twice has really killed my motivation too. But show me a person that installed for example RubyBox with a one click install (after trying it by hand) that thinks getting it from a 3rd-party repository is user-hostile. I will gladly put it offline if this is the case.

EDIT: And not to go too off-topic, many thanks Bundyo for Tear, it's great to see someone working on something that is built for the tablet instead of some half-assed non-hildonized "port". It has completely replaced microb for me and I'm loving it.

Making users go to repositories other than Extras is inconvenient, in that it requires them to hunt down a repository for each new package they install; unsafe, as Extras maintains a certain level of quality through certain QA processes and by having lots of eyes on it that random 3rd party repositories don't have; and generally acclimates users to a mindset that they shouldn't have to have ("I need a new repository for every new application" and "It's OK to add random untested and untried repositories to my tablet"), and is, thus, user-hostile.

I would really like to see our new Debmaster participate in these forums. We could have one or more threads discussing things like repositories, packaging, etc.

However, restarting the Extras vs. 3rd party repositories religious argument in this thread is not good etiquette.

These cases should be addressed before just giving up. We have lots of helpful people involved with Extras (one of whom is paid fulltime to help people to get their packages into Extras), if you have an issue, talk to one of them, then once it's decided that the issue can't be addressed (there's not many of these, really, even the Fennec problem is being addressed in its own way) you can move on to your own solution.

That's why we want to get everything we can into Extras (with source packages for free stuff), so we don't run into a situation where a disappeared-maintainer brings down half of the bailing-wire-and-chewing-gum system. Extras wont randomly disappear, like 3rd party repositories, and having the source packages on hand gives us a hand up in future package maintenance when a maintainer does disappear.

This is why we have a support structure for Extras. If you have issues, ping the mailing list, ping #maemo, ping bugs.maemo.org, or ping one of the half-dozen knowledgeable people involved to help you.

Going it alone doesn't help the problem to get fixed and it doesn't help your users.

That's the problem, a large portion of users don't really see it as an issue because they don't understand that it's an issue—that is, until adding some random repository drops their device into a reboot loop.

They probably can, when I consider it stable enough to go to extras and have time for that. 0.3 is near.

I'm already trying to fix enough - I'm porting hildon bindings to Vala, trying to fix the not very adequate hildon support in libwebkit. Oh, and actually write Tear, which is a pleasure compared to the rest. I have a full time job, wife and a 2.5 year old daughter. I can only write after midnight. What else do you want me to fix?

Please open a new thread for this if you want someone else's opinion on this issue, you already know mine.

Contact some of the people whose job it is to help with this stuff and get some help.

I thought the Summit was for contacting No one cared for Vala though.