Eclipse just doesn't work right for me. I'm so pissed by this crap...

I've been following this tutorial (whoever had the idea to use screenshots for the actual code parts... ever heard of copy'n'paste?).

At one point you need to add a class. A new class. Derived from Object.

So I chose the menu option in Eclipse to, well, add a new class. After pressing "Next" in the wizard, eclipse froze, using 100% CPU.

After killing and restarting eclipse, it had only created an empty file. But since I have to type in the data from the Tutorial anyway, ok.

Next step in the tutorial: edit the faces-config.xml file with the faces-config editor. Sounds easy. I click on the file, open with, faces-config editor. Boom. First some content type error message is displayed, but the details actually list a NullPointerException:

java.lang.NullPointerException
    at org.eclipse.wst.sse.ui.StructuredTextEditor.update(StructuredTextEditor.java:3047)
    at org.eclipse.jst.jsf.facesconfig.ui.FacesConfigEditor.addPages(FacesConfigEditor.java:396)
    at org.eclipse.ui.forms.editor.FormEditor.createPages(FormEditor.java:142)
    at org.eclipse.ui.part.MultiPageEditorPart.createPartControl(MultiPageEditorPart.java:276)
    [... 40 more lines of backtrace ...]

Error handling in Java sucks, too. Usually you just get a 50 lines+ stack trace.

[Update: deinstalling XML buddy resolved the last problem, and I could add a second class without another crash]

Steinar H. Gunderson even threatens kittens because of it, and Steve McIntyre ranted against using CDBS for packaging, claiming that it's much harder to fix bugs in packages that use CDBS.

I have to disagree.

More than once I've given up on fixing a bug in a package because I couldn't decrypt the huge makefiles used for building the package.

For private packages I often switch over packages to CDBS then, so I don't have to fiddle around with a build system noone except the original maintainer understands. And every now and then I fix a bug in Debian, but don't upload it because I replaced the "magic" build system with CDBS magic...

While CDBS does a lot of "black magic" to build packages, it usually does quite a good job. If it doesn't, it maybe even is a bug in CDBS, that happens.

debian/rules files that use CDBS are usually quite easy to read, even easier than traditional debhelper template-based scripts. And that is why I think that CDBS is a good thing: it does a good job at separating package-specific and package-independendant build scripting.

Maybe all we need is more documentation on how to properly fix common issues in CDBS, starting with misplaced or misnamed files etc. CDBS has a lot of hooks, but it's not obvious which hooks to use for which fixes.

(Note that sometimes the fix should maybe be done in the upstream makefile instead.)

On the long run, Debian could use a more unified way of packaging. Debhelper has already unified package building a lot, and CDBS maybe goes one step too far, but ideally we would all be able to understand each others debian/rules.

Ubuntu has been attracting "newbie" users, and also has drawn users away from Debian. Some people are annoyed by Ubuntu because of this - I am not.

Ubuntu users have been happily collecting third-party repositories to get the latest glitz like beryl. Treviño compiled a huge list of them, and made it easy to install (DON'T USE THIS!).

Everybody concerned with security must go mad with just the throught of collecting thrid party repositories for the fun of it. To most of us, it's bad if we have to use any third party repositories...

However, Johan Kiviniemi reacted in an interesting way. His highly experimental repository - setup for some 5 users or so, on his home DSL line - was included in this stupid "every repository I could find" list. Noticing this increase in users, he found out about this madness - and made a package to replace the default wallpapers (and disable wallpaper changing) with this scary warning message.

Sounds like a good plan to me, however many users were pissed by being warned that they've done something stupid...

So: thank you, Ubuntu community, for helping teaching new users that they shouldn't just blindly install software from the internet. :-) and for keeping these users away from Debian.