Re: Is Ubuntu a debian derivative or is it a fork?
On Tue, May 31, 2005 at 09:00:33PM -0500, John Goerzen wrote:
> In the ubuntu case in particular, I wish that they would be more
> proactive in sending their patches to the Debian maintainers. Asking
> us Debian folk to go to an obscure site somewhere, wade through
> listings of thousands of diffs, and find changes is difficult. For
> example, Python 2.4 is in sid, and I don't mind making my packages use
> it now. I'd appreciate any and all diffs from ubuntu folks.
I don't want to repeat the discussion about pushing patches; there's a
perfectly reasonable one already in the list archives. There are good
reasons why we do this the way that we do.
FWIW, the diffs you would get from Ubuntu would build for Python 2.4 _as the
default version_, which isn't what you want.
After Sarge, releases, it should be pretty straightforward for someone to
set up a script to mass-mail Debian maintainers copies of the Python
transition patches from Ubuntu (or all of the patches, if that's really what
they believe that Debian maintainers want).
> Sometimes they are changing things for some unique "ubuntu way". I'd
> like to ask them: why must the Ubuntu way be different from Debian?
> Is there a better way we could minimize patches and perhaps do
> something like provide differing defaults?
You might as well ask the same question of any Debian derivative. The
reason that derivatives exist is because people want different things.
In the case of Ubuntu, we outline on our website what we do differently.
It is of course in our best interest to keep the delta manageable, and we
try to do that.
> I've also been on the other side of the coin, and something that makes it
> difficult for the derivers is lack of communication from some quarters of
> Debian. I certainly recall frustration about inactive maintainers, and we
> must remember that there are maintainers in Debian that can't even be
> bothered to apply good patches when they see them.
Indeed, for all of the gripes about submitting patches, a disappointingly
small fraction of the patches that Ubuntu proactively submits are actually
uploaded to Debian by the maintainer.
> Finally, I would like to see many more developers putting their
> packages a distributed version control system like Arch or, better
> yet, Darcs. It makes it a lot easier for others to collaborate with
> you. For an example of what I'm talking about, see
> http://darcs.complete.org. Most of the directories there are Debian
> packages, and most of my Debian packages are in darcs.
In the not-so-distant future, a huge proportion of Ubuntu development will
take place in Arch branches, with the intent of promoting more efficient
collaboration both within Ubuntu and with Debian.
--
- mdz
Reply to: