debian packaging question

[realtime-neil]

Is/are the maintainer(s) interested in making this project into a native Debian package? Asking because I use session-manager-plugin on Debian and Ubuntu.

[realtime-neil]

Follow-up: I know about the "official" package mentioned here...

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/systems-manager/latest/userguide/session-manager-working-with-install-plugin.html#install-plugin-debian

...but there are quite a few policy violations on that one:

$ dpkg-deb --raw-extract session-manager-plugin.deb session-manager-plugin     
$ tree session-manager-plugin
session-manager-plugin
|-- DEBIAN
|   |-- conffiles
|   |-- control
|   |-- postinst
|   |-- postrm
|   |-- preinst
|   `-- prerm
|-- etc
|   `-- init
|       `-- session-manager-plugin.conf
|-- lib
|   `-- systemd
|       `-- system
|           `-- session-manager-plugin.service
`-- usr
    |-- local
    |   `-- sessionmanagerplugin
    |       |-- LICENSE
    |       |-- NOTICE
    |       |-- README.md
    |       |-- RELEASENOTES.md
    |       |-- THIRD-PARTY
    |       |-- VERSION
    |       |-- bin
    |       |   `-- session-manager-plugin
    |       `-- seelog.xml.template
    `-- share
        |-- doc
        |   `-- sessionmanagerplugin
        |       `-- changelog.gz
        `-- lintian
            `-- overrides
                `-- sessionmanagerplugin

15 directories, 18 files

For instance, we don't generally allow packages to install things under /usr/local.

[yuting-fan]

Hi realtime-neil@,

Thank you for reporting the issue with debian paths. Session Manager service teams will evaluate the request and update here.

Thanks,
Yuting

[pwillis-els]

The file paths are pretty egregious for packaged software. But also the package name ("session-manager-plugin") is so generic that you don't really know what it's for. The package could also use a better description; "see our website for details" isn't a description of software. And it's a plugin for AWS CLI, but it doesn't even list AWS CLI as a package dependency. It also lists docs like LICENSE and README.md as "conffiles".

[realtime-neil]

With the creation of #30 , I would call this isuse a proper subset of that one.

[tarfeef101]

Hi realtime-neil@,

Thank you for reporting the issue with debian paths. Session Manager service teams will evaluate the request and update here.

Thanks, Yuting

so... where's that update? can't imagine it's taken almost a year to evaluate?

[arthurzenika]

Another question is why does the package require a service session-manager-plugin.service ?

[realtime-neil]

@arthurzenika

Another question is why does the package require a service session-manager-plugin.service ?

For the same reason everything else is this repository looks like this: Because Amazon.

For lack of any official response (either in the past or likely forthcoming) I'll make a valiant guess: If Amazon can get you to run their program as root on a host you nominally control, then Amazon wants that program running always and forever.