Re: For those who care about their packages in Ubuntu
Peter Samuelson <peter@p12n.org> writes:
> Do you really think users who fail to notice an "Origin" tag from
> apt-cache, and believe they're above using reportbug, will notice an
> "-ubuntuN" suffix in the version number? I don't. I think you are
> arguing on abstract philosophical grounds rather than trying to solve a
> real problem.
The purpose of *this* change is not about non-confusion for users
(though certainly anything that could help is a good idea); the
purpose of *this* change is to aid *developers* in tracking down the
source of bugs.
The purpose of changing the *maintainer* is both to document
accurately, and to give a correct indication to users of who is
responsible for the package.
> People still do it on occasion,
> but at some point there's little that can be done to stop it - short of
> making the .deb formats purposely incompatible so you *can't*
> cross-pollinate your box even if you try. It seems to me that using a
> -ubuntu version suffix just to indicate "this package is compiled for
> Ubuntu" would accomplish approximately nothing. It's busy work, and I
> hope the Ubuntu team don't ever feel so badgered by this thread to
> actually waste their time doing it.
Actually, using a -ubuntu version would make it possible for dpkg to
automatically detect that you are mixing packages from different
distributions, and warn the user.
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