Bug#904302: Whether vendor-specific patch series should be permitted in the archive [and 1 more messages]
On Fri, Oct 05, 2018 at 08:40:03AM -0400, Sam Hartman wrote:
> That said, even there there are tradeoffs.
> As an example, Ubuntu tries to use unmodified Debian source packages
> where possible. In some cases I think that the maintenance advantages
> of doing this and the slight but real political pressure it creates to
> push changes upstream to Debian may justify switching on dpkg-vendor.
I disagree with that, because it forgets why you're pushing things to
Debian.
The point of pushing things upstream is so that you as well as upstream
end up being the same, and the maintenance difference disappears. By
switching on dpkg-vendor, you're *not* the same; instead, you're hiding
your difference. This is not generally helpful; it simply moves the
maintenance burden from Ubuntu to Debian (where it simply does not
belong).
This is papering over a problem rather than fixing one.
> I think my point here is that there's a lot of complexity, and I'm not
> even convinced it would be desirable to recommend against using
> mechanisms like dpkg-vendor.
You can easily say "having downstream patches in Debian is generally a
bad idea for the same reasons that having Debian packaging in upstream
sources is generally a bad idea. However, if you must do it, XYZ is the
least terrible way to do so".
[...]
--
Could you people please use IRC like normal people?!?
-- Amaya Rodrigo Sastre, trying to quiet down the buzz in the DebConf 2008
Hacklab
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