Re: Is Ubuntu a debian derivative or is it a fork?
* Stephen Birch
| Tollef Fog Heen(tfheen@err.no)@2005-05-31 18:06:
| > * Stephen Birch
| >
| > | The project seems to have established a mechanism for putting new
| > | packeges directly into Ubuntu. Are new Ubuntu packages also put in
| > | Debian by the Ubuntu team members?
| >
| > Yes.
Sorry, I originally misread your question. They aren't necessarily
put in Debian, but they may be. It depends on whether the person
uploading to Ubuntu is also a DD or has a Debian sponsor.
| Let me give you an example. I filed an ITP this morning on a
| promising package called wifi-radar.
|
| After writing the ITP I discovered someone has already built a deb for
| Ubuntu and placed it on the Ubuntu wiki. But they did not file an
| ITP.
|
| Normal debian etiquette identifies the maintainer of a new package as
| the first person to file an ITP. So how is this coordinated with
| Ubuntu?
It's not coordinated per se, but this isn't a problem either. If the
version in Ubuntu is modified from the version in Debian, they won't
be synced automatically. If you want to work with the maintainer in
Ubuntu -- that's great and the result will hopefully be even better.
| Unless I missed the ITP and filed a double by mistake we appear to
| have two independent wifi-radar maintainers now. The Ubuntu one and
| the debian one. In this instance there isnt an issue, I just want to
| see the software packaged and I'll happily yeald to the other
| maintainer if he/she wants. But I can see the possibility of a
| conflict in future when this happens with other packages.
If the person maintaining the Ubuntu version wants to make some
changes and those aren't accepted by Debian, it's just a forked
package with no harm done (except for any wasted effort).
| > | Also, when Ubuntu makes improvements to packages how do those
| > | improvements flow back to Debian?
| >
| > Patches to bugs, debian maintainers picking up the patches from the
| > patch repository, inter-team communication. It depends.
|
| Still looks more like a fork than a derivative ..... or a spoon :-)
It's both and not. I think of a fork as «we want to do this
differently and we're not going to “waste” effort getting stuff merged
again». Ubuntu isn't that; Ubuntu is trying to get the changes back
into Debian so they don't have to maintain their own versions forever.
--
Tollef Fog Heen ,''`.
UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are : :' :
`. `'
`-
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