Le mer 28 juin 2006 13:14, Ian Jackson a écrit :
> Ottavio Caruso writes ("Why Ubuntu is different, was: Minutes of an
Ubuntu-Debian discussion that happened at Debconf"):
> > --- Raphael Hertzog <hertzog@debian.org> wrote:
> > > We all have to acknowledge that Ubuntu is different from other
> > > derivatives by the success
> >
> > and by the fact it's not binary compatible!
>
> This is an important technical distinction but surely you don't mean
> to say that it's not a legitimate choice for Canonical and Ubuntu to
> make ?
it is legitimate and legal and all what you want. but it also makes the
cooperation between the two distribution a lot harder:
* take the not so recent example of Xorg6.9. Ubuntu decided to switch
to Xorg way sooner than debian. good for'em. as a result, you
couldn't even build an ubuntu package on debian, because it lacked
the necessary build-depends.
* ubuntu having python2.4 by default since 1year+ also causes problems
in that sense (even if one could argue that nothing really prevented
debian to switch earlier)...
and I guess there will still be numerous examples of that kind in the
future.
As a result, there will always be a lot of differences between the
debian version of the package, and the ubuntu one (e.g. if ubuntu had
switched to g++4.1 and not debian or the reverse, all the g++-4.1
compatibility patches would be present only in one of the distros). and
as ubuntu (to my perfect despair) is always 6 to 10 month ahead debian,
this backlog never reduces and makes any automated diff report useless
and unusable in practice.
The sole way to make ubuntu and debian really cooperate, without
letting a bitter feeling to the pure-debian developpers, would be that
Ubuntu coordinates its transitions with debian. but:
(1) I'm perfectly aware and conscious that it's not feasible because it
would mean randomness in Ubuntu schedules which is not an option
for them ;
(2) I even think some DD's are openly hostile to such a solution.
that said, I truly believe (with a little sadness I must say) that
ubuntu and debian are going to achieve some parts of their work twice,
again and again: transition will be done in Ubuntu, and then in Debian,
but not taking a lot of advantages or the other distro experience,
because there will always be differences in how the transitions are
dealt with (see the python2.4 example...).
Cooperating (like in tight cooperation) with Ubuntu is IMHO possible
iff on each packages, there is a period during when no distro has any
backlog wrt the other. Meaning that excepting some customization
patches (like an ubuntu/debian logo or theme) the packages should be in
sync. For a lot of packages, it's clearly not the case, and I hardly
see why it would be any time soon, it's not in Canonnical interest to
do so. I'm not really bitter about that.
Though, I'm saddened[1] by the fact that some people really think that
scott's patches or any other automatic send of big uncommented patches
can be called "cooperation", because it's not as soon as the package is
big enough, because those interdiffs, debdiffs and other big trunk of
patches won't be usable for them. And guess what, I'm part of the KDE
team, where the packages are huge (a relibtoolization of the package is
often 1 to 2Mo-big patch, I defy anyone to look into such diffs the 10
or 20 lines that could be a useful backport)[2].
Cheers,
[1] yes saddened, and not pissed like some may think. My previous mail
in that thread was not me beeing angry at all. That one is not
either. I'm just thinking the whole ubuntu-debian cooperation thing
in the current state cannot become something really efficient, and
I really can live with that, believe me.
[2] Fortunately, J.Ridell (from kubuntu) sometimes send us useful
patches, which is nice from him, and means we are way luckier than
some of other debian packagers in that area. But he can sometimes
forgot to do so, or think we have caught that already, or, or, ...
and since we work on different versions, different svn
repositories, it's just not possible to coordinate in a better way.
--
·O· Pierre Habouzit
··O madcoder@debian.org
OOO http://www.madism.org
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