Re: [PATCH] Debian packaging for 0.99.4

[Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>]

Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org> writes:

> On Wed, 10 Aug 2005, Sebastian Kuzminsky wrote:
>> 
>> People still use GNU Interactive Tools.  Not just crazy, stupid people,
>> and I bet not just Debian people.
>
> Why do you say that?
>
> Do you have anybody who actually does, or are you just claiming so?

Debian folks have a handy way to substantiate that claim or get
that claim proven wrong, and I am somewhat surprised that nobody
mentioned it so far.

Debian popularity contest (http://popcon.debian.org/).

Here is an excerpt I just made.

    <name> is the package name;
    <inst> is the number of people who installed this package;
    <vote> is the number of people who use this package regularly;
    <old>  is the number of people who installed, but don't use
          this package regularly;
    <recent> is the number of people who upgraded this package recently;

    rank  name            inst    vote     old recent
    1     base-files      7147    6777     158    212
    2     base-passwd     7147    6724     163    260
    3     debianutils     7147    6739     120    288
    4     sed             7147    6763     155    229
    ...                                                                    
    6591  git              114      24      83      7
    ...                                                                    
    25555 git-core           2       1       0      1 (Not in sid)
    29939 cogito-scm         1       0       1      0 (Not in sid)
    ...                                                                    
    46416 zope2.6            0       0       0      0
    -------------------------------------------------
    46416 Total        6768849 2118048 2306009 595621

So yes, among 46.5K packages in the known universe, the other
git ranks 6600th.  Does that mean it is popular?  I dunno.

Obviously, not everybody who installs Debian participates in
popcon.  The sample size of the above statistics is 7147
installations of base-files.

Among these 7147 sample installations, the other git was
installed by 114 people, and 24 people regularly use it.