[ros-users] 'stackless' packages

[Radu Bogdan Rusu]

To be honest, just to throw it out there, it might make more sense to have versioned packages in some cases, rather than 
versioned stacks.

Of course, this might depend on how the stack is arranged, and we could always argue that one can find better ways to 
organize stacks. But if I end up moving packages away from a stack just because I need them versioned differently, then 
that means something. :)



Now that being said, there are tons of reasons for not having versioned packages, most which have already been discussed 
here. It _could be_ a mess from a technical perspective, hard to implement, hard to debug, hard to release, etc... I 
don't know.

So the compromise could be unary stacks... :-/


On 02/09/2011 12:12 PM, Patrick Bouffard wrote:

>> It is more than that. The stack is the unit of release and install.
>> Stacks have versions, packages do not. The debbuild system deals only
>> with stacks.

I don't like this argument too much. Debs are only a convenience for one particular system (Ubuntu/Debian). While it 
turns out that this is what we supported (and most likely will support) heavily as our primary development platform, we 
cannot possible imagine that all the users in the universe would change to that.

There has to be a better distinction between developers and users.

> Understood. But if I have no plans to make use of the debbuild system,
> why should that be an issue for me?

+1.

Cheers,
Radu.
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