On 02/17/2011 12:08 PM, Barry Warsaw wrote: > On Feb 17, 2011, at 06:51 AM, Scott Kitterman wrote: > >> 1. From the LEP: Disabling dput uploads is not a nice to have. It's a >> misfeature that violates (AIUI) one of the core assumptions given to Ubuntu >> developers when this project was started: That we are free to ignore it. I >> find it very troubling that it's listed as a goal of any kind (the discussion >> about being able to enforce the use of merge proposals convinces me this is >> not accidental).
This particular proposal is only about adding a new route, not about replacing anything. The folks working on UDD certainly hope that their work will be "a compelling alternative to" traditional packaging techniques, so much so that people will want to switch. But, there's still a fair bit of work needed on the bits and pieces that make up UDD before it is a compelling alternative. Right now, it's an advantage to add UDD as an option, but would be a huge disadvantage to disable any existing tools. Down the road a bit, we may see more people using UDD, and if not the UDD developers will want to figure out why not: Are the tools inadequate? Are new contributors using UDD more and existing contributors sticking to traditional techniques because the process of changing tools would slow them down more than any advantage they might gain from the new tools? What additional features or changes in features might swing the balance so UDD is a net positive even with the cost of change? Even further down the road, there are some reasons why the community of developers (and the Tech Board) may want to consider some form of revision control across the entire archive: it provides a little more of a "safety net", easier rollbacks of extensive changes with unintended side effects, and easier ways of building "test branches" of the entire archive to preview risky changes. It's not time for those conversations yet. The UDD folks are focused on the "compelling alternative" story, and that's where they should be focused (scope-creep is a killer of good ideas). But plant the possibilities in the back of your mind as something to talk about at some point. > Are you saying that you want to preserve dput as an upload option forever? Do > you see a future where dput *isn't* the interface for uploading a new package? > Let's assume that all the current blockers are fixed, e.g. source packages are > fast to download, etc. > > I think at some point there should be only one way to do it. It's important to separate interface from implementation here. If the community decides to move toward revision control on the whole archive, dput could easily be kept as an interface, just changing the implementation (and maybe adding a few new flags or config options) so it works with the archive's revision control system. Allison -- ubuntu-devel mailing list ubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel
