[Replicant] Decision to not create a Replicant 6.0 SDK

[Paul Kocialkowski]

Hi,

Le jeudi 13 avril 2017 à 19:25 +0200, Wolfgang Wiedmeyer a écrit :
> some of you might already have noticed that I was spouting my opinion
> about how it's not worth working on a Replicant 6.0 SDK over the last
> months[1][2]. But we never had a final verdict among Paul, Denis and me
> or the community as a whole about this. I think we should decide if it
> should still be a priority to create a SDK or if it should be something
> that someone can create if they feel to, but it's not a goal that is
> actively pursued by the project.

Sorry for not responding to this concern earlier.

> So my proposition is to not work on a Replicant 6.0 SDK, but to get the
> Debian Android SDK into more distributions, especially GNU
> FSDG-compliant ones. A blog post could address this and encourage users,
> that are interested in a Replicant 6.0 SDK, to work with the developers
> of the distro they are using to get the Debian Android SDK packaged in
> their distro. If we agree on this strategy, it would be good to clarify
> some of the things below before writing a blog post, so we can provide
> more specific instructions on how this goal can be reached.

I definitely agree. The SDK is exactly the kind of tools that should be packaged
along with distros, rather than distributed as binary archives (which is no
proper way to distribute tools anyway).

The reasons you are bringing up seem very valid and your plan for informing the
community about it makes sense. So you've got my ACK on this :)

> Is it correct that Trisquel and Parabola are the most popular
> FSDG-compliant distros?

I think so. I'm personally using Parabola (and Debian).

>  It looks like the next release of Trisquel (8.0
> Flidas) will be based on Ubuntu 16.04. Ubuntu 16.04 has the android-sdk
> packaged[3], but it's not complete as some packages didn't make it in
> time. android-sdk-platform-23 which is the actual target platform is
> only in Zesty (17.04)[4]. Are there some Trisquel folks reading along
> that could chime in on this? Would it be possible to get the rest of
> the needed Android packages included in Flidas by backporting them from
> newer Ubuntu releases?

I agree that would be quite desirable.

> Hans-Christoph Steiner from the Debian Android Tools team addresses
> uploading to other distros in a mail[5]. I didn't yet see any efforts to
> get the SDK properly packaged in Arch Linux or in Parabola for that
> matter. Arch only seems to have packages that download the SDK from
> Google's servers without building it from source. Maybe some Parabola or
> Arch folks can comment on this? What would be the best strategy to get
> the packages into Arch? I guess if they are in Arch, they will show up
> in Parabola as well, at least eventually.

Maybe contacting the current SDK maintainer in Arch to get their opinion on this
would be worth it. If they seem opposed to it and unlikely to include it in
Arch, it's probably best to work directly with the Parabola folks.

I believe PKGBUILDs are much easier and simpler to deal with than the Debian
packaging system, so the task is probably not that big now that everything is
already ready from Debian (it would probably have been harder the other way
round).

Cheers and thanks for your continued efforts,

-- 
Paul Kocialkowski, developer of free digital technology at the lower levels

Website: https://www.paulk.fr/
Coding blog: https://code.paulk.fr/
Git repositories: https://git.paulk.fr/ https://git.code.paulk.fr/
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 833 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.osuosl.org/pipermail/replicant/attachments/20170413/240d21a4/attachment.asc>