Bzr plugins *must* die!

[Toshio Kuratomi]

Martin Pool wrote:
> - get a package for dapper into a more official place than our own
> ppa, such as dapper-updates -- this requires making a case for a large
> new code drop into what's supposed to be a very stable distro
>
[snip]
>> I personally would rather see the "release bzr" process include
packaging of
>> plugins to put into the ppa, rather than combining it into the source
tarball.
>
> OK, let's start doing that.
>
So the problem I personally have with this plan is that it doesn't help
third parties.  By third parties I include:

1) Other distros.  Solving this at the Ubuntu packaging level means the
other distros have to come up with a plan to address the same things.
Otherwise their packages will suffer from the same problems.

2) Authors of plugins which aren't packaged by the distro.  This can
just be the fact that there's so many plugins that the one you happen to
use might not be packaged.  Or it might be that your company has
developed an in-house plugin for some specific reason.

The combination of incompatible repository formats (which causes people
to need to upgrade) and incompatible API (which causes people to not be
able to upgrade) is maddening.

The only thing I really see solving this is for people to realize if
they want bzr to be something that third parties can build on they need
to release two distinct branches.  A stable branch that promises API
stability and a development branch for all the destabilizing changes
that bzr needs in order to grow.  For best effect, the branches should
be parallel installable as some people will want to run the stable
branch for work and the new-and-improved branch on their own projects.

Does this mean someone has to spend time making sure security fixes and
some bugfixes and maybe some feature enhancements get backported to the
stable branch?  Yes it does.  But the payoff is that you get more people
who can use bzr effectively and contribute to the plugin community since
they can consolidate on the stable branch.

-Toshio

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