Collaboration with Debian [was: Re: [Desktop13.04-Topic] GNOME plans review]

[Robert Ancell]

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