[asterisk-dev] Asterisk and distributions (Debian, Fedora, etc)

[Jeffrey Ollie]

On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 12:54 PM, Paul Belanger <
paul.belanger at polybeacon.com> wrote:

> On 12-11-14 12:02 PM, Daniel Pocock wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Following up from the SIP stack discussion, I think it may be useful to
>> have a separate thread to get comments from people about the
>> relationship of Asterisk with distributions.
>>
>
I'm the Asterisk packager for Fedora.  I do the packaging work on my free
time, I do not work for Digium or RedHat and my current employer does not
pay me to do the packaging either, although having Asterisk packaged for
Fedora certainly comes in handy at work.


> - release cycles/cut off dates (e.g. Debian was `frozen' a few months
>> ago, no new Asterisk packages will be allowed until the next `stable'
>> release in 2 years, although updated packages can be distributed in
>> backports)
>>
>
Fedora doesn't really work that way.  New packages can be distributed, as
long as it's primarily a bug-fix release.  Major version upgrades that
introduce new features and incompatibilities should only be introduced in a
new version of Fedora.


> - maintenance cycles (e.g. Debian releases need 3 years of security
>> updates, RHEL needs 7, which is a long time for VoIP)
>>
>
Yes, see below as support for Asterisk 1.8 will end before support for RHEL
6 does.


> - interaction with the packaging process (e.g. more people joining as
>> Debian maintainer, which is a stepping-stone to becoming a full Debian
>> Developer)
>>
>> - interaction with the support process (e.g. using Debian's bug tracker)
>>
>
I handle it by telling people that report any non-packaging bugs in
RedHat's Bugzilla to report the bugs themselves to Digium's bug tracker.  I
don't have the time, equipment, or knowledge of the Asterisk codebase to do
any debugging of the problem on my own, and I won't act as an intermediary
between Digium's bug tracker and RedHat's bug tracker.


> - addressing all of the above issues for dependencies, e.g. if using
>> libsrtp or resiprocate, how to make sure that distributions are all
>> carrying the version required by Asterisk?
>>
>
I handle it by being the packager for a number of the dependencies that
Asterisk requires, at least the unique ones like libpri or spandsp.


> This last issue (dependencies) is sometimes perceived as a major pain in
>> itself - but if it is planned from the beginning and co-ordinated with
>> other projects, it can be managed and it can work favorably.
>>
>> At the end of the day, distributions bring a lot of users, and if
>> everything is planned well, then users don't have to ask questions about
>> dependencies or how to install.  This saves valuable support time.
>>
>> I've worked with companies that just do telecoms and they don't mind
>> having bespoke servers for their apps, nor do they object to paying
>> fees for a freelance developer to fine tune everything.  However, as
>> more and more IT managers want VoIP, they don't want to spend time
>> building anything from source, they want the convenience of installing
>> with apt-get or yum, just like they do with Apache or Postfix or Mysql.
>>
>> Having some clarity about these relationships may give insights about
>> the priorities for the SIP stack question.
>>
>

>  So, lets us the following example right now with Asterisk 11, since we
> are already embedding pjproject in Asterisk and from what I understand it
> is a core dependency.
>

Fedora 18 will be released with Asterisk 11.  I knew about pjproject but I
basically ignored it (except for figuring out how to get it to build) as
licensing gives me headaches.  I posted a message to fedora-devel last
month about my plans for maintaining Asterisk in Fedora/EPEL:

http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2012-October/172286.html

The main takeaway is that EPEL6 (for RHEL6 and derivatives) will be
supported for long past the time that Digium stops supporting Asterisk
1.8.  Since EPEL is supposed to be all "enterprisey" and not do upgrades
that introduce new features and deprecate old ones that's a problem because
I'm not going to be spending my personal time to backport security patches
on my own once Digium stops supporting Asterisk 1.8.

I haven't talked with debian-voip yet, but I'm sure there is already some
> concern with packaging Asterisk 11 for Debian.  IIRC, nothing has been
> started yet and I suspect having pjproject embedded into Asterisk is going
> to be a hot topic.
>
> Would you expect distributions to remove the dependency on pjproject? Or
> worst, not package Asterisk because of policy?
>
> It would also be good to hear what Fedora's plans are too.


See the above link...

-- 
Jeff Ollie
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