Re: Debian for PS3?
[Hmm, let's use my Ubuntu hat for this mail ...]
On Sat, Feb 23, 2008 at 03:45:28PM +0100, Aurélien GÉRÔME wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 23, 2008 at 01:51:39PM +0000, Colin Watson wrote:
> > I am interested to know what specifically you think is wrong with
> > Ubuntu's PS3 packaging. Admittedly we were in a hurry for some of it,
> > but I'm not aware of any major problems. Perhaps you could elaborate.
>
> There is no major problems, hopefully. :)
>
> Last time I check (and I rechecked today at FOSDEM), the package[1]
> is not in sync with upstream[2],
That should be fixed, certainly, but is not a fundamental quality
problem, just that it hasn't been done yet.
> has binaries without manpages,
Upstream didn't provide any; it's certainly a bug that they aren't there
(like many other packages in Debian).
> and a huge monolithic diff without broken-out patches.
In my opinion the lack of broken-out patches is a feature, not a bug. (I
appreciate that you disagree, but until better tools are developed this
is a point of contention not a well-established Debian standard.) If I
had been doing it for Debian I would have done the exact same thing.
The diff is mostly just the missing generated Autotools files anyway;
that looks like it's been fixed upstream.
> > (kboot is going to be a pretty nasty hack whatever way you slice it, due
> > to being a boot loader with a built-in Linux kernel. We had to
> > compromise somewhat due to the current kernel and the kboot code we had
> > available not being friends.)
>
> OK, you made my point for ps3-kboot, I think it could be better done
> though, but I do not intend to bash Ubuntu in any way. I just have
> the Debian standards which have been pushed on me through the NM
> process. :)
The point I really want to make is that all my Ubuntu work is done to
the same standard as my Debian work, and as a result I get rather fed up
with the "oh, those Ubuntu guys did this, but we need to hold it to a
higher standard for Debian" thing that seems to be popular. There are
certainly Ubuntu developers who do lower-quality work, just as there are
Debian developers who do lower-quality work; likewise there are
excellent Debian developers and excellent Ubuntu developers. Of course,
people mainly notice when there happens to be a mismatch of some kind or
when they disagree with a decision.
If you aren't yet a Debian developer, you may still find it difficult to
distinguish between your sponsors' personal opinions and agreed Debian
standards. That will come with experience. :-)
> On a side note, but someway powerpc-related, perhaps you can tell me
> why you keep a broken device-tree-compiler with wrong versioning in
> Ubuntu (your 0.1-1 version is actually an old git checkout), while
> I have an up-to-date package in Debian.
Because the Debian version wasn't a higher version than Ubuntu until 22
December, which was after the point when we stopped automatically
syncing packages from Debian for Ubuntu 8.04. It looks like it'll be
automatically synced for the next release.
> I am no Ubuntu core-dev, so I am not allowed to sync it...
If there's an overriding reason to sync it despite our feature freeze,
I'd be happy to review a bug report.
Cheers,
--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@ubuntu.com]
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