Bug#904302: Whether vendor-specific patch series should be permitted in the archive
Hi,
On Sat, 28 Jul 2018, Colin Watson wrote:
> > Debian should not seek to prevent maintainers doing something that
> > they have agreed to do in collaboration with downstreams.
>
> My memory of the origin of this feature is that the dpkg developer who
> originated it asked me if it might help with upstreaming changes from
> Ubuntu to Debian, I said something along the lines of "uh, maybe, I
> guess, it sounds like that would have some problems?", and then they
> went ahead and did it. I don't *think* it was originally a request that
> came from derivatives, and I don't remember the sort of collaborative
> design that I think you're suggesting here.
As the person who implemented this vendor-specific patch series, I
have to recognize that it was a bad idea. It was easy to implement
and at that time looked like something possibly useful to encourage more
collaboration between Debian an Ubuntu.
But I agree with most of the critics that I have read and I believe
that we should forbid its use in Debian.
Now I'm no longer involved in dpkg, I don't know if Guillem is willing
to deprecate the feature. But at least it should be forbidden at the
policy level.
Cheers,
--
Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer
Support Debian LTS: https://www.freexian.com/services/debian-lts.html
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