On Tuesday 17 January 2006 00:39, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 15, 2006 at 02:59:58AM +0100, Gerfried Fuchs wrote:
> > It's also about false statements like "We sync our packages to Debian
> > regularly," because that simply doesn't happen for quite a lot of us,
> > otherwise all these heated discussions wouldn't happen.
>
> Given that you saw this on a wiki page, a disclaimer about wiki contents
> should be implicit. However, regardless of whether it's an accurate
> quote, it's quite clear to me from context that your interpretation
> doesn't match the text.
>
> The full quote is "We sync our packages to Debian regularly, because that
> introduces the latest work, the latest upstream code, and the newest
> packaging efforts from a huge and competent open source community.
> Without Debian, Ubuntu would not be possible." It should be obvious from
> the remainder of the sentence that it is talking about propagation of
> changes *from* Debian *to* Ubuntu.
syncinc _to_ debian implies that changes are _pushed_ to Debian regularly,
whereas in actuallity they're simply made available for pull by Debian (in
most cases)
what you're describing above is reforking from the latest upstream
regularly, while that will indeed minimize divergence, it's not even close
to being the same thing as "syncing the package with Debian"
there's notting inherently wrong with the ubuntu approach you just
described, but it is not wat is listed as ubuntu behavior.
> > I can only speak for myself (like everyone anyway, but it seems to be
> > mentioned), I haven't noticed anyone reaching me, so I hadn't had any
> > chance to burn anyone. The only contact with respect to Ubuntu was a
> > user disappointed that one of my packages in Debian had a fix that the
> > one in Ubuntu hadn't... for several weeks. All I could do is thank him
> > for appreciating my work but that it's out of my hands to fix it for
> > Ubuntu because I never was notified about that it's included there, and
> > wouldn't know at all who to contact therefore.
>
> It was inappropriate for this user to raise this issue with you, rather
> than with Ubuntu, but that's been discussed elsewhere in this thread
> already. What I find interesting about your statement is that you seem to
> imply that the situation would have been better if you had been notified
> that your package was a part of Ubuntu.
Considere the following:
- right now there are no Ubuntu changes to my package
- if Ubuntu suddenly does change my package for whatever reason, there's
absolutely no way I'll suddenly know to go check the patch page.
The above problem becomes worse when
- 1 DD needs to do this for lots of packages
- a package has lots of changes, some/most of which are not applicable to
Debian (mentioned earlier were whitespace changes, grateous
autotool-changes, changes to dpatch...), all which have to be sepperated
from the applicable changes each time one checks for new differences
That's a clear problem that becomes nightmarish for large amounts of
packages and/or non-applicable changes, it's also the problem pointed at in
the above IMHO
> This would be technically simple to implement, but I'm not convinced that
> it's possible to do it in a socially acceptable way. Emailing every
> Debian maintainer to notify them that their package is present in Ubuntu
> sounds like spam to me, and posting Ubuntu-related announcements to
> Debian mailing lists has been deemed inappropriate by many in Debian as
> well.
Not what's being asked: the question was to notify every Debian maintainer
every time a new change is being made to the ubuntu version that they
should look at merging back (dare I suggest by using Debian BTS?)
> I find this type of disclaimer very frustrating. I see a number of
> opinions expressed about the Ubuntu community by persons with no
> first-hand experience with it. Most Debian maintainers have probably
> never interacted with Ubuntu, and there's no reason that most of them
> should expect to. Setting aside the debate about patch submission for a
> moment, in the case of most packages, there are no patches in Ubuntu
> relative to Debian.
right, so please notify the maintainer when there is indeed a (new) patch so
they know to go look for it? As you've just pointed out presence of patches
is not the default state.
> In fact, I just looked, and I found only one package with maintainer
> alfie@debian.org which has a delta in Ubuntu: libmetakit2.4.9.3. I read
> the patch just now; here's what's in it:
>
> - Transition to python2.4 as the default Python version in Ubuntu. You
> don't want this patch for Debian yet.
>
> - Packaging transition for the gcc4 C++ ABI. Debian developers were
> notified about the availability of these patches in Ubuntu when the
> transition began in Debian, though it looks like you chose not to
> use it, and rebuilt the package instead.
>
> - autoconf has been re-run.
>
> In other words, I don't see what it is that you're dissatisfied about, in
> your role as maintainer of these packages. Are you speaking for yourself
> or on behalf of someone else?
So here we have Ubuntu offering a monolitic patch with 3 seperate logical
changes. One of which you yourself identify as 'not-for-Debian', a second
which should probably be classed that way also, and in any case has no
bussiness being mixed in with the gcc4 C++ ABI change patch.
Do you know of any upstream at all that would be satisfied with routinely
getting patches this way? Let alone accept them?
--
Cheers, cobaco (aka Bart Cornelis)
1. Encrypted mail preferred (GPG KeyID: 0x86624ABB)
2. Plain-text mail recommended since I move html and double
format mails to a low priority folder (they're mainly spam)
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