Vincent,
There might be merits of following the Ubuntu + Debian route _today_.
Maybe. But for the project, I fail to see the benefits.
I do not see myself convinced to mix packaging decisions for 2 different
distributions with different intent.
Take a look at the Dependencies in bumblebee-nvidia:
Depends: ${shlibs:Depends}, ${misc:Depends}, bumblebee (=
${binary:Version}),
nvidia-glx | nvidia-304 | nvidia-304-updates | nvidia-experimental-304 |
nvidia-310 | nvidia-310-updates | nvidia-experimental-310 |
nvidia-313 | nvidia-313-updates | nvidia-experimental-313
Sure it won't break. But it is all bogus for Debian, for ever, to OR
depend on packages that are non-existent.
As a DD, my efforts are to keep the packaging simple and minimal, so
that it is easier for _all_ derivatives to consume it.
Collaboration should be on
* Uniform package names
* Sharing patches
* Sharing policies
On Saturday 23 March 2013 04:23 PM, Vincent Cheng wrote:
> [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/
--
Ritesh Raj Sarraf
RESEARCHUT - http://www.researchut.com
"Necessity is the mother of invention."
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