I have a couple of FOSS projects. They can be a bit of a pain to get running unl
ID: 660374 • Letter: I
Question
I have a couple of FOSS projects. They can be a bit of a pain to get running unless you've got dependencies in place already, which I figure is par for the course for FOSS projects.
We know that each free operating system out there has its own package management systems. A few of them, such as homebrew on Mac OS or AUR on Arch linux are very friendly to community contributions.
What I am wondering is, who exactly is expected to contribute packages? Primarily I am concerned with the case of small or developing projects, since it's pretty standard for the big projects to be put in there by the OS maintainers.
From my perspective, it is something of a chicken-egg problem, because your software will not make its way into a package system if it does not have users, and it is less likely to gain users if it is not easy to install and use.
For the sake of discussion, let's assume that the software in question is actually legitimately useful. I can see where people could create crapware or spam and that should obviously be kept out of any package system.
So, in summary, whose job is this? Is it spammy for a FOSS software dev to put his own work into various OS package repositories?
Explanation / Answer
No, it certainly isn't spammy. Most packages are contributed to OS repositories by their authors, unless the author doesn't make a package for an OS, in which case the users of an OS with users of your software will create one.
Also, you should handle the OS-specific packaging stuff, and have it ready for the package repository maintainer to just 'drop in'.
For example, for Gentoo, you'll write an ebuild file (a fairly concise text file that describes the fetch and build process), then file a bug requesting for the (attached) ebuild to be added to the main portage repository.
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