develop packaging guidelines

[OniriCorpe]

follow up to a discussion in ynh's internal channels

suggested approaches

• do not allow packagers to do black magic, we want packages that can be maintained without having to wrack our brains trying to understand obscure mechanisms
  • if really necessary, document your damn stuff, put comments everywhere, it can't hurt to have many comments, really
• do not allow non standard tools usages (pnpm, pyenv, pythonz, etc), because we want packages to be standardized, to not allow them to get bloated
  • such tools usage should be done on helpers side (for standardization purposes): we can discuss their implementation if it's really relevant
  • maybe add linter tests to detect such behaviour and put a warning if so
• do not allow packages to compile dependencies other than the app itself, for example the python interpreter
  • it's fine to compile the app if we have no other choice, but why the hell compiling python (or similar stuff) instead of just downloading a pre-compiled binary?? it's just an abusive waste of resources for no real benefit, and this prevents smaller machines from accessing the app
  • maybe yunohost itself could provide such pre-compiled binaries for standard dependencies? after reviewing the packager request and agreed on the relevance
• acknowledge that some apps aren't compatible with yunohost (for technical or ethical reasons) and forcing them to fit the mold isn't a good idea

[lapineige]

if really necessary, document your damn stuff, put comments everywhere, it can't hurt to have many comments, really

And please do not remove comments that are not clearly outdated for the sake of "cleaning" if you're not sure they are no longer useful. Comments are here to document useful stuff :)

[lapineige]

do not allow non standard tools usages (pnpm

That is mandatory, or at least the only way documented, for more and more tools… how do we handle this on the packaging side ? For my part I know and understand almost nothing about these things (that keep changing every 6 months because why not…) and already struggle to use the provided installation documentation for many apps, so I'm far from able to workaround them and use other tools.

[OniriCorpe]

do not allow non standard tools usages (pnpm

That is mandatory, or at least the only way documented, for more and more tools… how do we handle this on the packaging side ?

• such tools usage should be done on helpers side (for standardization purposes): we can discuss their implementation if it's really relevant

[OniriCorpe]

and no, it's not mandatory .____.