Re: Is Ubuntu a debian derivative or is it a fork?
On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 09:53:40PM -0400, Joey Hess wrote:
> Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> > Debian does, in fact, treat most of its upstreams precisely this way.
> > Debian publishes a large portion of its changes primarily in the form of
> > monolithic diffs relative to upstream source. The last time I saw
> > figures, the usage of dpatch, cdbs, etc. was rising, but not yet the
> > standard operating procedure.
>
> This is a falacy, for example, I would never use any of these (IMHO
> useless at best and often damaging[1]) patch management systems (I know of
> two much better ones: subversion and arch), but this does not mean that I
> do not feed (and, as necessary, re-feed for new upstream releases)
> individual patches to all my upstreams for every non-debian-specific
> change that I make to my packages. I have no reason to think that I'm
> alone in this.
I didn't claim that you were alone in this, but the fact is that there are
plentiful examples of packages in Debian where this is not the case: we've
discussed the situation on this very mailing list in the past.
> On the other hand, Ubuntu does not seem to do this mutch at all unless the
> Ubuntu developer involved happens to be on the Debian team for the package
> (as in d-i and gnome packages).
This should be a pretty clear indication that team maintenance makes this
kind of collaboration easier.
> > Ubuntu re-converges with Debian very regularly. I think what you meant to
> > say is that you want Debian to re-converge with Ubuntu.
>
> Not really.
Without any clarification on your part, my interpretation remains unchanged.
Ubuntu routinely imports all of the new code in the Debian archive, sorts
out any necessary merging, and incorporates the changes. You are arguing
for something similar to happen in the opposite direction.
> > Regarding your specific example, I know of no reason why Debian couldn't use
> > Ubuntu's X.org packages when Debian is ready to make the transition, but in
> > the end that will be the XSF's decision, not Ubuntu's.
>
> Let's assume that they don't (since they're not, exactly, TTBOMK). Now
> does Ubuntu re-converge its X.org packaging with Debian's new
> packaging, or do you stay forked?
That question obviously depends on the details of the differences in
packaging, which I don't have at the moment. We'll do what makes most sense
for Ubuntu based on how the situation plays out.
Surely it would be misdirected effort to reimplement work which has already
been done in Ubuntu, and so I assume the Debian packaging would at least be
based on Ubuntu's packaging, in which case convergence should not be a
problem.
--
- mdz
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