Re: [Help-gnunet] From IRC chat: ng0 asked me to post problems with the git docs.

[Diagon]

---- On Sun, 07 Oct 2018 11:47:33 -0700 Andrew Shead <address@hidden> wrote 
---- 
 > Perhaps creating builds for Flatpak would solve the dependency issues 
 > (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatpak). Once you clean away this mess 
 > and produce a working build that is available from Flathub 
 > (https://flathub.org/home), anyone on any system that supports Flatpak 
 > can easily install a self-contained Gnunet that is independent of system 
 > libraries and guaranteed to work and continue working. 

Andrew - while this certainly sounds like a workable solution (Ubuntu uses Snap 
- perhaps it's Flatpak in Debian?) it strikes me that the issues lie elsewhere. 
 If gnunet has required dependencies only available in the Debian testing, then 
the developers appear to be saying that they are not yet interested in general 
use of gnunet, that it should only be used by people at the bleeding edge.  
Even more, if there is not even a clearly articulated list of dependencies and 
their options, then they appear to be saying that they aren't yet interested in 
having it appear as a apt-package, or even as a straightforwardly installable 
source package.
 
 > Flatpak would also support advances in the Gnunet technology that are 
 > incompatible with previous major versions. The installed obsolete 
 > versions would continue to work. 
 
This sounds like a more "alpha" development stage, which makes me realize that 
while it may be there somewhere, I have not noticed anyone saying if gnunet is 
to be considered alpha, beta or otherwise?  If alpha, what would be appropriate 
to such a stage?  I guess what I see in the wild are source packages that I can 
usually figure out how to install, sometimes with .deb's, .rpm's, etc. prepared 
for major distributions.

 > At some future moment a method might be needed to share data between 
 > incompatible versions. Perhaps this bridge can happen locally between 
 > two incompatible Flatpak'd Gnunet versions running on the same machine.

Is this maybe even pre-alpha?  Are we continuing to expect breaking revisions 
to protocol? 

/D