Comment 37 for bug 1779863

My current schedule will make IRC being difficult, sorry.

The problem is that users are *already* split into two factions. They
expect apt-get to work, but they also expect npm install to work too. The
former is fine on your end, because you control the whole ecosystem here,
but it's perfectly reasonable for people to also expect that doing npm
install just works too, and right now that's not the case.

On Tue, Aug 7, 2018 at 10:51 AM, Robie Basak <email address hidden>
wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 07, 2018 at 03:59:27AM -0000, Nicolas Noble wrote:
> > So one another solution I'd then see would be for you to bite the
> > bullet, and stop calling your runtime "nodejs", because, well, it's not
> > really nodejs.
>
> Sure. This falls under correctly "declaring binary compatibility" in my
> analysis.
>
> When it comes to this kind of thing, we rely on a single arbitrator to
> define how to do this exactly so that all distributions, as well as
> binaries built directly from upstream sources, correctly interact and
> agree on what constitutes compatibility. Upstream works best to act as
> the arbitrator since you're unilaterally in a position to define what
> constitutes binary compatibility. Downstreams can't really do that. I
> suggest, then, that you define exactly how to do this correctly, and
> incorporate this mechanism into your build system (or at least
> officially document it) so that all distributions do it the right way.
>
> For example: it's not really "node-debian-v57" either; it's
> "node-openssl1.1-v57". Ubuntu, Debian and all other distributions that
> might release with nodejs linked to OpenSSL 1.1 would all share binary
> compatibility, AIUI, so it would be overkill to force them to lose
> binary compatibility between each other just because this compatibility
> is ill defined. The build system should correctly arrange for the report
> to be correct based on how it was built. If this were to happen, all
> distributions would simply use it, and you'd get your "declare your
> binary compatibility correctly" wish granted by default.
>
> > But your obstination on releasing a nodejs runtime that's not really
> > nodejs while 100% masquerading as the official nodejs will eventually
> > force us to discourage our users to use your runtime, because there's
> > nothing we could do to handle the subtle bugs you're introducing on us.
>
> I suspect what will happen here is that we'll end up rebuilding nodejs
> against 1.0 in 18.04. But this won't solve the problem for next time.
>
> >From your wording I don't think you've understood the distribution
> ecosystem and why what you are doing and your expectations are a problem
> for distributions to be able to meet in the general case. Distribution
> users *expect* package dependencies to be de-duplicated, and to receive
> security support for those dependencies from a single source. This is
> the reason that "apt-get install ..." Just Works. You rely on this too:
> for everything on your system that works without you caring for them
> specifically.
>
> Let's try not split our users into two factions, and instead figure out
> how to solve this problem well for everyone. But I think to begin to do
> that you first need to understand why distributions work the way they
> do. I'm happy to spend more time with you on this. Please feel free to
> ping me on IRC for a more interactive explanation of this, or to arrange
> some other medium.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
> report.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1779863
>
> Title:
> Ubuntu nodejs package isn't ABI compatible with mainline nodejs.
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nodejs/+bug/
> 1779863/+subscriptions
>