Re: Collaboration with Debian [was: Re: [Desktop13.04-Topic] GNOME plans review]
My intuition is that Ubuntu should definitely maintain its own GNOME stack. Since Unity is still largely based on GNOME technology but we may not agree every decision of GNOME upstream. And Debian's view point of GNOME upstream may different from us and they don't maintain Unity at all. But for things like "texlive" or "rar" should be mutually synchronized I guess. I don't think Debian or Ubuntu make a difference for such packages. I've shown my bad experience on "texlive" package. I'm working on "rar" package since it is in broken state for almost two years. For who sync who, I believe it is better to start with Debian if possible. It seems to me that Ubuntu has well established way of Debian sync while it is not the case in other direction. -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Collaboration with Debian [was: Re: [Desktop13.04-Topic] GNOME plans review]
On 17/10/12 18:02, Martin Pitt wrote: > Robert Ancell [2012-10-17 10:48 +1300]: >> - By updating packages in Debian and waiting for them to flow down to >> Ubuntu kills our velocity. It can change the time from upstream release >> to being in Ubuntu from hours (which is too long in my opinion) to days. > Yes, I agree that this is an issue at times. It usually works > reasonably well for me to upload a new version to Debian and fakesync > it into Ubuntu at the same time, but I have (1) DD upload powers and > (2) everything set up to build packages for Debian, which is not true > for the majority of Ubuntu Desktop developers. > > However, at the same time I strongly believe that directly working > on Debian's packaging VCSes has some major benefits: Technically we > avoid duplicate work and potential conflicts (such as naming new > packages slightly differently, or a bug fix independently done on both > sides works in a different way/with different API), and socially it's > a great way of giving something back to Debian in return for having > Debian do the vast majority of work of building Ubuntu. It also avoids > the need of having to wade through large and mostly pointless merge > deltas every so often, a work that nobody is really very fond of. > > Would an acceptable compromise be to commit fixes and new releases to > Debian's GNOME svn, but then just do a -Nubuntu1 upload from those, > at least for the packages which we want to keep in sync by and large? > > Martin > I'm always hesitant to commit to a Debian repository since I don't run Debian my changes are never going to be tested properly. As you state, no-one likes to wade through the deltas and in my experience after doing that no real benefit is gained. The changes mostly come down to build-dependencies and addition/removal of patches (which are put into/come from upstream bug/git). It is faster to compare the upstream tarball changes than doing the merge from Debian. So what I suggest we do is admit "merge bankruptcy". If the attempt to be in synchronisation is not bringing us more up to date or higher quality packages (I'll assert it's having the opposite effect) then we should stop trying to do it. Note of course this doesn't stop changes flowing back from Ubuntu to Debian if anyone wants to do that - we just shouldn't be using it as a criteria to judge the quality of our packages. --Robert -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Collaboration with Debian [was: Re: [Desktop13.04-Topic] GNOME plans review]
Robert Ancell [2012-10-17 10:48 +1300]: > - By updating packages in Debian and waiting for them to flow down to > Ubuntu kills our velocity. It can change the time from upstream release > to being in Ubuntu from hours (which is too long in my opinion) to days. Yes, I agree that this is an issue at times. It usually works reasonably well for me to upload a new version to Debian and fakesync it into Ubuntu at the same time, but I have (1) DD upload powers and (2) everything set up to build packages for Debian, which is not true for the majority of Ubuntu Desktop developers. However, at the same time I strongly believe that directly working on Debian's packaging VCSes has some major benefits: Technically we avoid duplicate work and potential conflicts (such as naming new packages slightly differently, or a bug fix independently done on both sides works in a different way/with different API), and socially it's a great way of giving something back to Debian in return for having Debian do the vast majority of work of building Ubuntu. It also avoids the need of having to wade through large and mostly pointless merge deltas every so often, a work that nobody is really very fond of. Would an acceptable compromise be to commit fixes and new releases to Debian's GNOME svn, but then just do a -Nubuntu1 upload from those, at least for the packages which we want to keep in sync by and large? Martin -- Martin Pitt| http://www.piware.de Ubuntu Developer (www.ubuntu.com) | Debian Developer (www.debian.org) -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
