[Bug 245594] Re: Please add binNMU capabilities to Soyuz

[Scott Kitterman]

On Tue, 5 Aug 2008 13:02:39 +0200 Stefan Potyra 
<stefan.potyra at informatik.uni-erlangen.de> wrote:
>Hi,
>
>On Tuesday 05 August 2008 12:28:55 Reinhard Tartler wrote:
>[..]
>>
>> Could you please give a rationale why we don't want binNMUs in ubuntu,
>> but require sourceful uploads? I was under the impression that we don't
>> want this because there was no infrastructure for this. Now the request
>> for adding this is rejected on the grounds that policy forbids this. I
>> have the feeling we are turning in circles here, so could someone please
>> followup on the bug report?
>
>Actually I don't think binNMUs are needed in the first place for Ubuntu, 
>mainly because there is no NMU-part of it.
>
>After all, it's not too hard to write a script which fetches a number of 
>packages, adds a changelog entry and uploads the result.
>This imho is even better, since I guess that people will rather tend to 
take 
>over responsibility by signing a .changes file and uploading a package 
>instead of "just" clicking a lp button.

I think the current approach is wasteful of both developer and buildd 
resources.

Sometimes it's just needed to do one arch, not all of them.  Fetching piles 
of source packages is doable, but takes time that could be better used 
elsewhere.  I have often wished we had something like binNMU (pick another 
name if you like, since NMU is not relevant in an Ubuntu context).

This is a logical next step from the ability to retry failed builds that is 
now on Launchpad.  It'd be a good step.  If your concerned about abuse, 
maybe it could be restricted to core-dev or the release teams.

Scott K