Bug#673424: Fwd: Bug#673424: bbswitch packaging
[Whoops, hit "reply" instead of "reply to all". It's gmail's fault.]
On Sat, Mar 23, 2013 at 3:24 AM, Ritesh Raj Sarraf <rrs@researchut.com> wrote:
> On Saturday 23 March 2013 03:02 PM, Vincent Cheng wrote:
>> I see no harm in trying to make my package compatible with both Debian
>> and Ubuntu, as long as the changes are not overly obtrusive and don't
>> break anything in Debian. I'm actually of the opinion that it's best
>> to minimize diffs between Debian and Ubuntu whenever possible, and I
>> aim to do that with all the packages I maintain. Forcing derivatives
>> to maintain deltas benefits nobody; we should encourage maintainers to
>> forward as much work upstream as possible, and that goes for Ubuntu's
>> relationship with Debian as well.
>
> I can understand the intent but then it will become a never ending
> story. Which derivative will you stop at?
It ends at Debian and Ubuntu. The one major difference that is the
root cause of all the Debian/Ubuntu-specific sections in bumblebee's
packaging is how differently the proprietary nvidia driver is packaged
(if that were fixed one day, there'd be no need for all the derivative
specific stuff). No Debian/Ubuntu derivatives use a different
packaging scheme for the Nvidia proprietary driver, except those who
suggest directly downloading it from Nvidia's website (which we don't
support).
> Sooner or later, your packaging rules end up being:
>
> if debian:
> elif derivative1:
> elif derivative2:
> elif .....
>
> Combining the efforts should mean working on a common base. Not
> accommodating multiple bases this way.
We are working on a common base. I'm working with upstream to merge
all the Debian-specific changes, so that we can all pull from the same
source each time there's a new upstream release without me having to
put as much work to merge everything. The current packaging (which
Aron started) was based off of upstream's PPA, and so far it looks
like upstream is receptive to our changes, so we can continue basing
our work off of upstream's PPA for future releases. Hence, less
duplicate work for us in Debian.
> Diverging the packaging must have good reasons; at least it brings in
> the flexibility and the speed. In this case, the best example is the
> nvidia packaging.
I still don't see convincing rationale for us to diverge the bumblebee
+ primus packaging from the work that upstream have done, or to break
compatibility between Debian and Ubuntu.
> Like I said in the previous email, I haven't seen a guideline on this
> topic. But from what I've observed in different teams, none of them
> package this way.
I haven't seen any guidelines either. But I don't think I'm the only
one who's actively trying to accomodate both Debian and Ubuntu; e.g.
I've seen blog posts where DDs have demonstrated how to merge
differences in Debian and Ubuntu in the packaging scripts (see Raphael
Hertzog's explanation on how to generate different sets of
dependencies for Debian and Ubuntu [1]), or e.g. the Ubuntu Games team
folding into the Debian Games team to collaborate together (but to be
fair, I don't think there was much of an Ubuntu Games team to begin
with...).
Regards,
Vincent
[1] http://raphaelhertzog.com/2010/09/27/different-dependencies-between-debian-and-ubuntu-but-common-source-package/
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