[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: ubuntu-science



Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:

On 7 January 2006 at 18:16, Daniel Leidert wrote:
| Am Freitag, den 06.01.2006, 23:22 -0800 schrieb Jordan Mantha:
| > I am | > encouraging the MOTUScience team members to at least email this list | > when a new science package has been added to Ubuntu so that we don't get | > a lot of duplication of work. | | You see the duplicate of work? Debian user or maintainers of science 
| package have to remember to send mails to the Ubuntu lists and the
| Ubuntu guys have to do the same and send mails to the Debian lists.

I am with you. I am still confused about this whole thing:

-- On the one hand Ubuntu/Kubuntu is a well put together distro and I run
   Kubuntu on a few machines and like it. I happily recommend it, and its
   polish and coherence make it really quite pleasant. I only use it on 'use
   only' non-development machines.

-- On the other hand as a maintainer (of currently 72 packages), I am
   _appalled_ and _shocked_ by the lack of feedback from Ubuntu to Debian --
   at least as far as I can see. There was a thread on debian-planet a while
   that mentioned Ubuntu bug archive. Sure enough, there were patches to
   (though in my case only a few) packages of mine. Nobody ever bothered
   to let me know, yet at the same time Ubuntu is happy to take advantage of
   the work I've been doing here for now over a decade of diligently
maintaining my set of packages.
I can understnad where you are coming from here. That is really what I am trying to work on here. There are a lot of Ubuntu users who are not Debian users and there are a lot of Ubuntu contributors who are not Debian users. When Malone and launchpad.net are fully functional then I think it will be a lot easier. Right now on Malone we can attach a tracker to the Debian BTS so that we can keep track of a Debian bug that is also reported in Ubuntu. What I am trying to work on is the communication back to Debian. We want to be able to give back to you but I think to some extent it is hard when you are an Ubuntu user and not a Debian user. I personally am working on learning how to use Debian's BTS and file ITPs and find sponsors but it is not something that I automatically know just because I package for Ubuntu. 



-- Lastly as the one behind Quantian, the to my knowledge single largest
   collection of scientific / numerical / quantitative apps in one
   ready-to-run place, I'd love to pull the two resources in and get, say,
   the more polished desktop experience and menu organisation of (K)Ubuntu
   back into Debian / Knoppix / Quantian, and would also love to pull some of
   the additional packages in.  But I am
     * still puzzled about the binary interchangeability, or lack thereof,
       between Ubuntu and Debian
     * confused as to why one would want to insert a package into Ubuntu
       but not Debian (other than the needing a DD sponsor reason).
To be honest, I package for Ubuntu because it is the distro I use. I don't run Debian (although maybe I should) so I would feel awkward about packaging something for a distro that I don't even run. Now, maybe that is my fault but I am encouraging Ubuntu packagers to go ahead and file ITPs or RFPs and find sponsors. 



I really don't want to be confrontational, or start another useless flame
war. But given Debian and debian-science, how can we achieve the best
outcomes with the least amount of duplication and waste?
I agree. That is why I started this discussion. For me it comes down to this, we have Debian users who will want to package/patch for Debian and Ubuntu users who will want to package/patch for Ubuntu and what we need is for the Ubuntu packages/patches to get make it into Debian because that is good for everybody. I wanted debian-science to be aware of what we are doing over in Ubuntu so that we can communicate/coordinate as needed to avoid duplication of work and make sure that we are giving Debian/Ubuntu users the best distros we can. 



Thoughts or comments?

Dirk
Reply to: