[365] in athena10
Re: Adding software "to the release"
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jonathan Reed)
Mon Aug 4 19:11:32 2008
Cc: athena10@mit.edu
Message-Id: <00FEAD92-261F-4BC7-81DE-183E2C885DA3@mit.edu>
From: Jonathan Reed <jdreed@MIT.EDU>
To: Greg Hudson <ghudson@mit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <1217543327.12433.84.camel@error-messages.mit.edu>
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Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2008 19:11:14 -0400
> (Acrobat will not be part of debathena-cluster-software because
> there is
> no Debian package for it, since it's not free software. But evince,
> the
> Ubuntu default PDF viewer, is good enough to replace the core
> functionality of viewing and printing PDF files. The locker can still
> be used for corner cases.)
I'm trying to think if there are any scripts or documentation which
assume that "acroread" is in the default PATH and that it does
something useful. I want to say there are, but I can't think of any
beyond Firefox and the OLC stock answers, the former will become moot
and the latter is fixable. This feels like a large change, even
though it's almost certainly not. I wonder if "acroread" shouldn't
stick around as an attachandrun script, but that feels like a hack and
will interact poorly with people who do install Acrobat.
> From a policy perspective, the software should:
>
> (1) Have a package maintained well enough that it doesn't interfere
> with the environment. (For instance, by expecting interactive input
> when it installs or upgrades.)
What is a good way to test for this? Run apt-get install and see if
it asks any questions? How can I best simulate an unattended install
to determine whether a package sucks or not?
> (2) Be useful enough to justify the disk space it takes up. A 250K
> package doesn't need to be very useful, but I turned down seamonkey
> because it's too large for the expected userbase.
Is it disk space or network traffic that's the issue? The default
cluster config these days has a 250GB drive, and you mentioned earlier
that it will be possible to have a cluster config without taking all
the third party cluster software. Not having to maintain or support
a package is a big gain, I think, and is potentially worth any disk
space. However, if it means that, say, all of W20-575 is trying to
take a 200MB package at the same time on an ancient network, then
that's a valid concern.
For reference, I have compiled a list of 3partysw that we maintain in
lockers at the moment which is available in Ubunu repositories. It's
at:
https://wikis.mit.edu/confluence/display/ZEST/3rd+Party+Software+under+Athena+10
#3rdPartySoftwareunderAthena10-IS
%26TMaintainedPackageswithUbuntuEquivalents
It's part of the larger document (https://wikis.mit.edu/confluence/display/ZEST/3rd+Party+Software+under+Athena+10
) which I'm working on as a draft plan for changing how we deal with
3partysw under Athena 10. Everything there is still in the
"brainstorming" stage of things and no decisions have been reached. I
haven't even run it by Alex, since he's on vacation.
-Jon
