[Pkg-xen-devel] Bug#536174: Bug#536174: Bug#536174: xen-utils-3.4: pygrub searches for filesystem plugins at the wrong path

[Thomas Goirand]

Bastian Blank wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 08:08:48PM +0800, Thomas Goirand wrote:
>> Related to the above also: I even asked the Xen team the request to add
>> the following 2 symlinks, that would have solve many issues in numerous
>> software:
> 
> What is "numerous software" and what are they doing with this internal
> und unstable interfaces?

Namely: enomalism, dtc-xen (our software). We are currently getting away
from it, and build a cleaner code using libvirt, but still ... There
must be some other software as well, I remember at least a 3rd one needs
it, but can't remember it's name.

In both cases, the goal is to avoid forking yet another process, by
calling "xm list", "xm stop" or "xm start" for example, by simply
including some python code and calling the main. I don't see how this
can be unstable, and why you want to prevent people from doing it if
they want to... It does work pretty well, and has been working for YEARS
(since Xen 2.0.7 at least).

>> I was told that it was a stupid thing, and my bug was tagged "wontfix".
>> I'd like to understand exactly WHY the packager took this decision.
> 
> Because it declares the interface as public and therefor stable enough
> to not break now and then.

Xen authors decided to put it in /usr/lib/xen, I don't see why it should
be any different in Debian.

>> This makes absolutely no sense to me, and also, I don't think that being
>> a maintainer gives you the rights to decide for everyone using the
>> distribution.
> 
> In Debian the maintainer have the power to decide this. However, they
> can be overwritten by the developers at all or the technical
> committee.[1]

But best practice is to listen to suggestions, and be open for
discussions, no?

>>               This was a very big concern for us, and I was really
>> disappointed to see the reaction of the Debian Xen team, not considering
>> the report, and being quite unfriendly.
> 
> Only a small amount of the people gets payed to do the job, most are
> volunteers.

I don't see how the fact to be payed or not has to do with the discussion.

>> Also, if there's no /usr/lib/xen, what is the point of having a
>> /etc/alternatives/xen-default? I'd like to understand.
> 
> There is a /usr/lib/xen-default. This link is meant as a last resort
> fallback in case it can't decide which version to use.[2] So in theory you
> can use a handmade Xen with a prebuilt version of the userspace.

My point is that there should be a /usr/lib/xen, and there is no reason
that Debian is the only distro. in the world that doesn't have one, it's
not standard, and always causes issues.

Thomas