Slackware dev team call - topics of interest/questions?
 

Hello.
(re-creating this topic as the previous subject title was too specific)

Me and some of the Slackware core team thought we'd do a video call and discuss some topics for which we'd ordinarily use our chat group for - talking perhaps about what's coming next and what's going on now.

I thought we could have part of it where we can try to answer some of the community's questions.

Examples such as this are the type of thing that we can discuss.

We'll probably meet up within the next few weeks and the recording will be published on the Slackware ARM youtube channel.

A few questions come to mind.

1) Are there any plans to update the website? I think everyone likes the design but some of the content seems out of date. a couple quick examples: The link to store.slackware.com is dead and Chris Lumens has apparently moved on from "bangmoney.org".


2) How does the Slackware team feel about the current package series layout? Is there any interest in re-organizing the package sets so that they can be used independently, or are there specific reasons why they are categorized in this way? I know I'm not the only one who has assumed that d/ was optional at install time only to find out that it really isn't.


3) How big is the core Slackware team, really? I guess this goes along with my first question since there are a few names that I don't see on the website and I feel like they deserve a bit more recognition than the occasional line item in the changelogs. Unless those people want to remain anonymous in which case feel free to disregard my question ;)

Hello,

I have this question: What is the process behind adding and removing a package from the distro? I remember applications/libraries getting in and getting out. I like to hear about the process behind the decision.

why don't we get sbopkg in /extra? :p

because sbopkg is dealing with SlackBuilds, not directly related to Slackware itself

Since SlackBuilds.org was officially endorsed by Slackware, it kinda makes sense to me, but fair enough, not gonna argue. A bit of an offtopic: why don't we get sbopkg from SlackBuilds.org?

That question would be good for https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...-a-4175706801/ but is kind of irrelevant here.

I'm interested in the Slackware development testing process.

Updates to -current come pretty fast, but ISTM breakage is relatively rare. How is that achieved? (Or is it just my false impression?)

What testing is done before pushing new -current packages out to the public? Do they have unit tests or something similar? Does the team get to see Patrick's changes before they land on the website to check that there are no major problems? Maybe it depends on the type of package (applications vs. "system" packages that lots of other packages depend on)?

Although I am new to Slackware & don't consider myself to be knowledgeable enough to advise on design and I like Slackware as it is; however, I can see this desire among folks to get the ultra-minimum-iso & pulling other stuff later as & when needed. Personally, I think it is very much doable(from the user's perspective) as requiring bundling things like they are right now as KDE, AP, XFCE, etc. Easy way to get the minimal thingy. So, there is that if it made some sense.

Better still : why not have sbopkg added to Slackware? I don't buy the argument that it is for SlackBuilds and not for Slackware ; it is a tool to process and install software for Slackware, the same as wget and curl are tools Patrick Volkerding uses to download the source and build official Slackware packages.

I'd like to know if building software as an unprivileged user has ever been considered. It's a great feature of NetBSD's pkgsrc, which allows you to build and install perhaps 70 or 80 percent of the tree without root privileges.

Why not grub?

You should probably be more specific, we have grub.

There is a mention in the ChangeLog for 15.0 rc3.
Maybe it will be default in -current at some point or as an option in the installer.

One can argue that when a new Slackware is released, SlackBuilds.org may not be immediately available with updated scripts for said release. So, I *get it*, that's why I only jokingly asked. However, sbopkg not being available at SlackBuilds.org is a true mystery.