Debian concordance

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Fri, Jun 17, 2005 at 01:55:57PM -0500, Ian Murdock wrote:

> I don't doubt there were changes, even some worthwhile changes,
> between the version of libc in sarge and the versions in
> hoary/breezy. My question is: Are the changes worth breaking
> compatibility? It's a cost/benefit thing. And if they're
> important enough, why aren't they going into Debian directly?
> 
> I understand why Ubuntu was moving ahead of Debian before, since
> Debian was so far behind. But now that sarge is out, don't
> you think it would be worthwhile to give Debian a chance to fix its
> release cycle problems and, better yet, to try to help fix them,
> rather than simply saying "Debian is too slow/unpredictable for us"?

Let's slow down for a minute.  No one has said "Debian is too
slow/unpredictable for us", no one is denying Debian a chance to address the
issues with its release cycle, and Hoary did not break glibc ABI
compatibility with Sarge.

I think the following timeline might help to clarify the situation:

2004-12-27	glibc 2.3.2.ds1-20 uploaded to sid
		(http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-changes/2004/12/msg01481.html)

2005-04-08	Ubuntu 5.04 (Hoary Hedgehog) released, with glibc based
                on (and compatible with) sid's (and sarge's) 2.3.2.ds1-20
		(http://www.ubuntulinux.org/504Released)

2005-04-16	glibc 2.3.2.ds1-21 uploaded to sid
		(http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-changes/2005/04/msg01457.html)

2005-04-18	glibc 2.3.5 uploaded to experimental
		(http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-changes/2005/04/msg01579.html)

2005-04-28	glibc 2.3.2.ds1-21 accepted into sarge
		(http://release.debian.org/sarge-hints/vorlon)

2005-05-17	glibc 2.3.5 uploaded to breezy
		(http://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/breezy-changes/2005-May/004798.html)

2005-06-06	Debian 3.1 (Sarge) released, with glibc 2.3.2.ds1-22
		(http://lists.debian.org/debian-announce/debian-announce-2005/msg00003.html)

2005-06-??	glibc 2.3.5 expected to enter sid sometime this month

As I've said to you privately already, I do not feel that demanding binary
compatibility between Debian and Ubuntu is the best way to address your
concerns.  You seem to disagree strongly, as is of course your right, but I
think that some of the comments that you've made in support of this cause
have been misleading.

The fact is that Hoary *was* binary compatible (in both directions) with
both sarge and sid when it was released.  Later, the Debian glibc
maintainers and release managers considered changing the ABI in order to fix
a bug.  In the course of a lengthy discussion[0], including expression of
concerns about inter-distribution compatibility, they weighed the options
and decided to go ahead with it.  I fully support their decision, and I do
not consider the resulting incompatibility to be a significant obstacle to
the continuing growth and success of either Debian or Ubuntu.  Presumably,
neither did they.

[0] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=297769

Again, you may disagree with me on this point, but there is no justification
for claiming that Ubuntu created this situation, regardless of your opinion
about it.

> Again, as I've said before, it's *sarge* the rest of the world thinks of
> as Debian, not sid. So, "we're getting out patches into sid" or "we're
> tracking sid" or whatever doesn't really help anything.

I don't know what you mean by this.  Are you trying to say that:

- Patches received from Ubuntu should have been pushed into sarge more
  aggressively?

- Ubuntu should base its development branch on sarge rather than sid?

Neither of these interpretations make sense to me.

-- 
 - mdz