Why are there no downstream Linux distro packages?

[dan]

Hi. I’m just curious why there seem to be no downstream packages in any Linux distro repository, or package repositories for other operating systems like Homebrew for macOS or FreshPorts for FreeBSD. Especially the Arch Linux community are great at packaging and maintaining packages for even the most fringe unpopular weird niche software out there. However, I haven’t found anyone downstream packages for OpenLiteSpeed. Small competitors like Caddy and Lighttpd are available just about everywhere.

Is there an underlying trademark or licensing issue that prevents downstream projects from packaging and distributing OpenLiteSpeed? Has the project specifically requested downstream not to distribute OpenLiteSpeed? I’m new to the OLS, but it seems quite valuable and I can’t see why it’s wouldn’t be more readily available in the Linux distro ecosystem. At least some distro-specific repositories should have picked it up by now, right? What’s the story here?

P.S.:I’m not talking about the official first-party repository at rpms.litespeedtech.com. I’m talking about Linux distributions and other software repositories packaging and distributing OpenLiteSpeed as a — from their perspective — first-party package maintained by that distribution’s community.

 

[HLFH]

Same question...

 

[Lubos]

Bump. Need it in the AUR.

 

[mac2net]

As Yogi Berra would say, “the less available a package is, the more popular it becomes.”

 

[technotic]

For Arch Linux, it should be obvious .. I'm surprised arch even has a package manager and doesn't force compile from source for everything

For packages to get inclusion into a distro source repo, they are compiled by the distro developers against that distros release libraries. That is why, for example, Fedora distro packages aren't 100% EL (RHEL, CentOS, Alma, rocky) compatible, despite being the upstream for them all. Fedora uses a different release model. EL9 follows a common set of libraries, even if they customize their kernels and other packages differently. EL9 is compatible with EL9 regardless of distro.

You would need to talk to the package repo maintainers and convince them to add it to the repos, or find someone running a non official repo who builds packages for the various releases.

Having binary files and an integrated package are very different things. With a package, you have to consider the libraries and other packages a user might have installed. It has to be built against the base system for that release for 100% compatibility. It has to follow the tree structure properly. It typically includes the proper initd or systemd service files. It would also have to avoid conflicting at all with any other package, such as overwriting files or such. And also use the common distro file structure for web servers (like /var/www) and more.

Running their own repo is not something that other developers usually do, so the package building often comes elsewhere.

While litespeedtech might cross compile binaries for other distros, they might not have people proficient enough with every distro to create proper packages for distro releases. In that case, you have to do more work, but that's typically the case with almost any open source project. Some projects only build .Deb packages, for example.

Maybe someone here in the community who has the knowledge necessary to build distro packages for the various releases of the distros you mentioned, will make packages themselves and host a repo, and if they test out right, maybe litespeedtech will host the repo for them. But they would need to keep up with new releases for distros and ensure that the package is built to be confined to the proper distro release (for example, EL8 packages won't install on EL9, and vice versa).

So it's a lot of work. And BSD/darwin have never won awards for "plays nice with others."