Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 10:48:25 +0100
From: Carsten Hey <c DOT hey AT web DOT de>
To: Sjors Gielen <mailinglist AT dazjorz DOT com>, debian-devel AT lists DOT debian DOT org,
   cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: Hosting the Debian/kCygwin port?
Message-ID: <20090121094825.GF15594@foghorn.stateful.de>
Mail-Followup-To: Carsten Hey <c DOT hey AT web DOT de>, 	Sjors Gielen <mailinglist AT dazjorz DOT com>, 	debian-devel AT lists DOT debian DOT org, cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
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Hi.

Sjors Gielen wrote:
> Now I'm wondering where to host this project. I've been thinking about
> three locations: Sourceforge, Debian or Cygwin. I've filed a project
> takeover request for Sourceforge, but the original project admin seems
> to work against me a little and it doesn't seem "fit" to release
> there.

debian-cygwin.sf.net is a Debian GNU/w32 port and I see no reason to
remove the project page on Sourceforge. Although there are no releases,
there has been some work done (see http://lists.debian.org/debian-win32/)
and this site should IMHO at least reside for historical reasons. Maybe
there is a chance to reanimate this project or at least reuse some of
the work that has been done or concepts that have been developed.

You called your port Debian/kCygwin, so why don't you prefer
debian-kcygwin instead of debian-cygwin as Sourceforge project name? The
former is still available.

A few comments about the name:
 - Debian GNU/kCygwin seems to fit better since you use a GNU userland
   and Debian people tend to share the FSF view about naming operating
   systems.
 - The "k" means normally "kernel of". The idea is probably born because
   Debian GNU/FreeBSD was already taken by a port that used the libc
   from FreeBSD. Later IIRC Robert Milan had the idea to use the GNU
   libc for a Debian FreeBSD Port and only the kernel from FreeBSD. This
   makes porting single packages a lot easier but requires porting glibc
   first (the FreeBSD specific diff against glibc is IIRC about 1 MB).

> Since the largest part of the project would be the packages in their
> new Debian source and binary forms, I at least need an apt repository.
> The Debian project already has the structure for that ...

You can create the repository yourself using eg. reprepro until your
port is more integrated into the Debian infrastructure.

I don't think that you will get the permission to host your port on
debian-ports.org and thus make this port semi-official before you prove
that there has been a significant amount of work done since you are yet
unknown among the Debian developers and currently no Debian developer is
working with you on this. Debian operates an own Sourceforge clone but
this is hosted on a single server with a relatively small harddisk, so
this is not an option for hosting.

I would first host it on Sourceforge using a not already taken project
name and after you are able to show first results try to move it to
debian-ports.org. Chances that it will be hosted on debian-ports.org and
be integrated in the whole Debian infrastructure are way better when you
are able to provide some working packages, at least "required",
"important" and a subset of "standard" and "optional" (I think about
things like perl and build-essential including its dependencies as
a useful subset of "standard" and "optional").

The reasons for the relatively few responses to your mail are probably
that most Debian people are not that interested in Windows in general
and that you did not provide pointers to the work you have done until
now. When you look at the subscriber count of debian-win32 you see that
there are at least some people that are interested in such things (it
has even more subscribers than debian-qa or debian-www).

Such a big project is easier to do when you work together with other
people, a more detailed mail with pointers to code and/or specifications
to debian-win32 AT lists DOT debian DOT org might be a good way to find those.


I wish you much fun and success with your port
Carsten


--
Please CC me, I don't read this list regularly.

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