Re: [Evolution] Evo-mail - too many files issue

[Adam Tauno Williams <awilliam whitemice org>]

On Wed, 2011-03-23 at 12:00 +1100, Nick Jenkins wrote:
> > FWIW, it was meaningful enough to me. The word 'Ubuntu' means that
> > he's using a version of Evolution that is *so* old that I cannot be
> > persuaded to care about it.
> Given that we all seem to agree that Ubuntu are doofuses 

Yep

> 10.10/Oct 2010 and onwards, I have to ask: Would there be any merit in
> an upstream repository of pre-built Evo packages?

Sure.  Build it!  :)

There might be a [what do Ubuntu people call it...?] a "PPA" (?) for a
current version somewhere.

> there could be automated builds of Evo, for each of the current stable/
> previous stable/current dev or head or unstable trees, to produce a .rpm
> & .deb, for amd64 and x86-32 bit architectures (so 3 trees x 2 package
> manager formats x 2 architectures = 12 automated builds a night).

OBS can do this.  Someone 'just' has to maintain the package specs.
<https://build.opensuse.org/>

> * Upgrading wouldn't be such a big deal. I'd estimate that maybe a third
> of email threads in response to end user problems on this list at some
> point will contain a "that's an old version, you need to upgrade" type
> of response, irrelevant of distro. But one big reason that people are
> reluctant to upgrade is that it's a hassle and typically involves
> upgrading everything on the system, which in turn will probably break
> other things -

This may be perception, but I don't believe that it is true.  Generally
staying current *avoids* problems.  I update openSUSE greedily,  each
edition resolves issues.

> * More users could track the latest development version.

openSUSE provides Factory for this - but there-be-dragons.  Getting
ahead of QC isn't a way to avoid problems.

> But I don't know if such a thing is even feasible. For example:
> * It seems a massive ask of the already very busy developers to set
> something like this up. It looks like there is already some continuous
> building going on (see http://live.gnome.org/BuildBrigade/ and
> http://build.gnome.org/evolution ), but the aim doesn't seem to be to
> produce end-user installable .deb and .rpm packages, which would have to
> be an extra workload, so it may not be practical.

OBS provides this.

> * Is it even technically possible to just upgrade Evo, or does the whole
> gnome desktop need to be upgraded? 

That's a good question.