MOTU Application for Guillaume Martres (smarter)

[Guillaume Martres]

On Tuesday 23 September 2008 19:24:16 Cesare Tirabassi wrote:
> On Tuesday 23 September 2008 18:03:42 you wrote:
> > Hi,
> > - PlanetPenguin Racer has been unmaintained for years now
>
> The popcon stats however are telling me that ppracer is still quite
> downloaded and used:
>
> Ubuntu
> 2618  planetpenguin-racer         35666  1305 33831   517    13
> 5670  extremetuxracer                 6522    813   5165   542      2
>
> Debian
> http://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=ppracer
> http://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=extremetuxracer
>
> Assuming however that we don't want to have ppracer anymore, then why not
> simply ask for it to be removed?
As I said, I didn't have time and didn't consider it a priority

> > - ExtremeTuxRacer will eventually completely replace it, I didn't have
> > time to add conflicts/replaces and to request the removal of ppracer for
> > Intrepid, and I'd like to discuss it with Debian first(even if the
> > maintainer doesn't seem really responsive)
>
> Didn't you ask yourself why the debian maintainer decided to package it
> differently (omitting the faulty binary package)?
I made my package before someone did one in Debian, and I don't see why I 
should be omitting files from a package.

> > - These files weren't modified by the etracer team, so having one of the
> > package or the other does not make any difference
>
> Yes, so, why not just changing file names and possibly the content of the
> palette files (they are called ppracer* right now, so why not etracer* or
> whatever else you are using for the rest of the package), so that both
> packages could be installed at the same time?
I didn't want to diverge from upstream for no good reason.
> Are you aware that using replaces/conflicts is a last resource to be used
> sparingly, and certainly not to cover these type of cases?
No, I wasn't aware of that and have seen it used a lot of time, were have you 
seen that it's a "last resource"?
> > - Removing the package would mean that people who want these files and
> > extremetuxracer at the same time would have to get some etracer packages
> > and some ppracer, which is a bit confusing.
>
> Why? I installed them both and played with them for a while, I can
> understand that some people may want to have them both (as the bug reported
> did).
You may want to play an old and a new version of a software, but few people 
do.
> Anyway, the technical merit or not of your choice is not the point. What is
> important for me is the impression I got, mainly that you decided on your
> own taking the easy way out, disregarding the opinion of a fellow community
> member and the opinion of the Debian maintainer.
> This is certainly not the behaviour I like to see in a fellow MOTU.
I'm sorry that you felt this way, and would have liked to discuss a bit more 
about this bug(I didn't upload it right away) but your only suggestion was to 
fill a removal request, which I'll happily do for Ubuntu 9.04, but first I'll 
try to get it removed from Debian.
I opened a bug in Debian BTS with my changes attached as a debdiff but never 
received an answer. I could have waited more but Feature Freeze was coming and 
some hours before it, persia asked me to do the merge if I wanted it to be in 
Ubuntu. I did it since it was still better than a package completely different 
from the Debian one, and included the conflicts/replaces change since I wasn't 
sure it would be easy to add it after the freeze.

-- 
Guillaume Martres - https://launchpad.net/~smarter