[Lazarus] What is aarre?

[Reinier Olislagers]

On 4-9-2012 11:11, Juha Manninen wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 10:35 AM, Reinier Olislagers
> <reinierolislagers at gmail.com> wrote:
>> include links to packages maintained elsewhere (e.g. the
>> synapse trunk svn) as there will be people/groups that want to maintain
>> their own product totally</feature request>

> My idea also was to have links to packages maintained elsewhere.
> However the stability of the repository would suffer. The linked
> servers can have downtimes or can disappear. Copying a stable version
> of those packages to the Lazarus repository would solve some
> maintenance problems.
> Yet, the repository surely needs a maintainer and co-operation with
> the package authors.
> Does anyone know how Perl (CPAN) and other similar systems do it. I
> understand they have have copied the packages and mirror the server.
> Some other repositories use links, eg. many Linux distributions.
Sorry, no experience there.

> There are many things involved. Many versions of the same package must
> be supported etc.
> It can grow into a very complex system which is not the goal now.
:)
Starting simple, finding out what works, and only then increasing scope
is a concept that has worked well for me at least ;) Much better than
writing up all possible use cases and getting lost in functionality that
1% of the users will ever want.
If linked packages doesn't fit into the current ideas, no problem ;) If
it turns out to be something that is desired later on, perhaps it can be
added without too much trouble.

> The GUI in Lazarus could allow searching and installing, but also
> voting for the quality of the packages.
If you support voting as well as provide some indication of where the
package comes from (i.e. the main repo or a linked repo maintained by
somebody else), I think having links is very valuable.
Your idea of having a stable version of a package in the main Lazarus
repo would solve reliability/availability issues, while external devs
could ask their advanced users/people depending on newly released fixes
to use linked packages...

I think the big advantage of linked packages is that it much easier for
devs to provide support for this - they presumably have to fill out some
description file, zip/compress their package and provide a download link
with the result... Not much hassle and no need to contact those poor,
overworked, central repository guys ;)
While the stability etc of this link cannot be guaranteed, as you see,
it is still much better than the current situation: a user has to search
through the wiki, and perhaps forum, to find where to download a
package. At least a (central+linked) package system will be a very good
incentive to provide one big central list of available packages.


> There are many possibilities.
Yep.
I'd also prefer to have something small that just works and that we can
experiment with now, and improve as we go along (as long as we're not
afraid to reorganize things as long as it's in testing mode).