MOTU Application for Stéphane Graber (stgraber)

[Stéphane Graber]

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Daniel Holbach wrote:
> Stéphane Graber schrieb:
>> But here's the problem, after asking the TB to get limited upload rights
>> to main for LTSP (ltsp/ldm/ltspfs) and iTalc, it turned out that they'd
>> like me to become a MOTU first, then re-apply for main upload rights.
> 
> How's collaboration with Debian working out for these packages? How do
> you manage to stay on top of bug reports of these packages?

For LTSP, packagers are usually also part of the development team
upstream. We try to keep the package identical in both Debian and Ubuntu
when we can but some things like the themes, some udev weirdness, the
fact that Ubuntu uses nbd and Debian uses NFS, ... requires some changes.

I'm currently working on the packaging for Jaunty's LTSP trying to get
rid of most of the duplicates we currently have as some init scripts
exist in both our packaging and in the upstream branch for only a few
lines change.

So basically I do the packaging for LTSP (ltsp, ltspfs and ldm) in
Ubuntu, when I need a new upstream I tag and release a new upstream
release and Debian (packaging done by Vagrant Cascadian) then uses the
same upstream and usually look at the changes I did on the Ubuntu side.
We are all in the same IRC channel and most upstream changes and new
upstream release are discussed with all supported distros (debian,
fedora, gentoo and ubuntu).

For iTalc, I usually sync the packaging with Debian when I see a major
change there, most of my patches on iTalc are LTSP-specific, the one
that weren't are now integrated upstream. The Ubuntu package basically
add some wrapper to detect other computers and generate classrooms with
that, that's mainly used in LTSP environment. Some other distros took
these changes, OpenSUSE is an example.

As for bug reports, I'm not aware of any major bug in iTalc, I often
check the bug page but IIRC we have one upgrade failure and a feature
request. The major bugs iTalc had a while ago were debugged and then
fixed upstream (x11vnc crashing when using some VNC parameters).

LTSP has a lot more bugs reported then iTalc of course, the problem is
then to find what's LTSP's bugs and what's application not being
LTSP-aware, for example we currently have a few bugs related to KDE4 not
working correctly with LTSP. For others, Scott did a great job of
triaging most of them and fixing them upstream, so we just need to check
what needs a SRU now :)

> 
> How much changes in other packages were necessary to get LTSP (and
> friends) working nicely?

We have some changes in some Gnome components like fusa and the system
menu that Oliver did to make it LTSP-aware. For example we don't want
the "switch user" option when someone is connected remotely as there is
no chance it'd work. I have someone at the office at Revolution Linux
working on having the same kind of integration with KDE4.

> 
> How much packaging changes were necessary in the last LTSP uploads?

Quite a lot actually, at least for the one I'm preparing at the moment
as some components were moved to another source package upstream,
requiring a new binary package and depends to be updated. We did quite a
lot of change at the LTSP Hackfest with some of the core components,
adding easier scripting, improving the local applications integration,
... I have most of that now integrated in the package in my PPA, I just
need to focus on reducing the delta between upstream and Ubuntu for the
init scripts.

> 
> 
>> As I'm working in a company that does everything on Ubuntu, I will also
>> be able to sponsor other employees' fix so helping with the SRU process
>> when possible.
> 
> I hope you find some time to sponsor changes from others as well. ;-)

Sure, except that others can't yell at me directly, except during the UDS :)

> 
> Is there a lot of LTSP bugs that should be fixed in SRUs?

A few yes, Intrepid is pretty good and stable but Hardy will need some
SRUs. Scott Balneaves (another LTSP developer :)) is working on triaging
all the LTSP bugs at the moment and should soon have a list of patch to
apply to Hardy's LTSP. I'll help him getting these in Hardy as SRU.

> 
> Have a nice day,
>  Daniel

Stéphane
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